


Capturing the Sunlight

by fredecorn



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Bad end, But please read only if you're really unsure about it, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, From fluff to angst actually, M/M, MORE WARNINGS IN THE NOTES (INCLUDING SPOILERS), NDRV3 Spoilers, Post hope arc, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-23 01:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18539305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredecorn/pseuds/fredecorn
Summary: After the 77-th class returns to the island, which they wanted to escape not so long time ago, the life finally gets back to normal in the world slowly recovering from the Tragedy. But nobody wants to believe that peace may not last so long.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [[На русском]](https://ficbook.net/readfic/8047287)
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> The full list of warnings, including topics which weren't specified in tags, but still can be probably sensitive for somebody, BUT it's very spoilery, please read it only if you're really unsure if it's going to be safe for you or not: From Fluff to Angst, Terminal Illnesses, Bad End, Mercy Killing.  
> It's not going to end well and had been written with the sole purpose of upsetting others and myself, keep that in mind, too.

He could pretend that the morning hadn't came yet, or hadn't been something he would call a morning yet. But all of his attempts to do so were supposed to fail. Before he even tried to open his eyes, he could already feel how it was going to become too challenging task for him to handle at that exact moment. A minute later, or an hour... but even eternity wasn't enough to find any strength or determination to fight against that gravity the bed was radiating, so it didn't matter. At the moments like this he could just wonder how the human being could've been designed to wake up, get up every single morning and greet the new day. For sure, it sounded so unnatural.

Lying on his side and being sunk with his cheek into his own hair, Komaeda could saw the bathroom door at the other end of the room, when an hour before he only imagined it being there, though it had nothing to do with him anyway. Nagito turned on his back, and it was seemingly harder for him than it was used to be. The t-shirt was pulled up and squeezed him around the upper half of his waist; the blanket tied up his leg forcing Komaeda to stay still in the not so convenient pose. He pulled his leg trying to get it free: the fabric stretched somewhere near his hip, ending under the right elbow leaning on the bed.

He put his mechanical hand on his forehead and explored the ceiling with a wandering eye. He neither had anything on this mind nor wanted to change this fact. He was waiting to be dragged back into sleep, but the longer he was staying awake the harder it was to keep himself in the bed naturally. Komaeda made himself up above the sheets fixing his t-shirt a bit, giving up on that now fading away confidence that he wasn't going to lift a finger within the next couple of hours. To get rid of everything getting in his way of curling in a bed and burying head into a pillow, Komaeda got out of the tangled blanket and pushed it far away.

Once the disturbed air had gone still again, the stuffiness enfolded his skin and continued suffocating him. Nagito made that unpleasant discovering after breathing it. Why was there such a lack of oxygen?

By that moment he acknowledged that his sleep was already disturbed too much to return to it. Though he still had a vague hope for it... at least he had nothing else left to actually interrupt him. Komaeda reached for the window without looking; not so cautious but neatly, he slided his hand between semi-opened blinds and got to the knob. When and why did he even left it closed? Some nights on the island was chilly enough for Komaeda to enjoy warm and cozy bed too much for the tropical area. But he rarely woke up being overheated or, especially, freezed. Usually he hadn't a chance to be bothered about such little things. And at times like that he finally discovered – it was always like something new – how many details of his everyday life stayed unnoticed by him somehow. He just had to wake up in the empty, stuffy cottage for it: in the mess of sheets, a blanket, pillows, and himself all alone.

A nice breeze flew into the room and slided over his wet neck. He might either be snoozing for not so long, so the air hadn't been heated with the sun yet outside, or the room was really as unbearable to stay in as it felt. Nagito brushed his hair away a bit, and the coolness touched his forehead for a short but truly pleasant moment. He could hear ocean noises from the opened window: a rare person would enjoy hearing them just like the first day he did it before so many years passed. Other than a joy it was more like a satisfaction to Komaeda. These sounds meant that the world was keeping going the way it was supposed to be.

Komaeda had nothing to interrupt him. He was alone there, he could put the back of his head down on the pillow and spend the rest of the day just like that if it really was what he wanted. And the next day too. The third day of his absense would probably be the moment when somebody would come to check if he's still alive. Hajime could tell him off for such low vision of himself and his classmates, but Komaeda, to be honest, found such progress impressive. Three days sounded much better than a year.

He was sitting on the bed for a while, having lengthy, unformed thoughts in his mind, before he could find enough courage to let the morning be. Komaeda touched the floor with his bare feet and headed to the bathroom with a hollow sounds of steps, following him by wood.

He himself greeted him from the mirror: still sleepy a bit, with a neckline of old, stretched t-shirt being slided to the left side. Komaeda was unsure if it was good or bad of his self-esteem improvement that what how he actually looked at morning wasn't usually as bad as he expected it.

A quick shower and a small fight with the hairbrush left behind. Being almost finished with freshening up, Komaeda reminded himself to check the time while he was dressing. Though his morning bed imprisoning took a life, he wasn't late for breakfast at all. To fully justify him, there were a bunch of people – who Komaeda could guess straight away – who were most likely still fully absorbed by their beds without any shame and worries about being asleep for too long or waking up at unreasonably late hour. He could surely feel the morning all the way from Hinata's cottage to the restaurant when he hadn't met a single person during it.

When Komaeda came to the hotel's second floor, it didn't seemed to be very crowded there too. The only occupied table was the one near the wall which Kuzuryuu and Pekoyama were sharing. They were having a conversation which had suddenly stopped once Komaeda came and Fuyuhiko catched his glance. Yakuza hesitated, but that seemingly had come not from his suspicion or hostility towards Komaeda, it hadn't anything to do with him in fact. It looked like he could have been caught off guard by anyone appearing instead of Nagito. The last one fortunately hadn't the habit to be annoyingly curious about things which were so much juicier for somebody like Hanamura, for example. They exchanged their greetings, and Komaeda moved to his actual business without paying a lot of attention to the couple which eventually had started to talk again, lowering their voices a bit.

He had his breakfast alone at the table near the window, watching how the world behind it was slowly perking up and the rest of 77-th class' former students made their ways out of cottages. He was unintentionally listening to Kuzuryuu and Pekoyama's talk, though he didn't intend to meddle or anything, but it was hard to brush off the old tendencies, and it's even harder when you don't try to do so at all. For the incredibly big part of his life Komaeda took the invisible place in other people's lifes by observing: without talking directly, without trying to get closer to anyone, but he had been watched how others were doing it, and he was content just with it and this one-sided affection he experienced with his mutuals, one-sided sympathy, one-sided friendship, if someone like him was even allowed to have friends, one-sided...

"It's been a while" were the wrong words to put this into. "I remember it as if it was just yesterday" were the wrong words as well. He just had it in his past, and Komaeda yet didn't believed in this strong enough to tell anyone or himself that it really was just left there, so far away, irrevocably and without any marks on him. But, with no doubts, his life had turned to that plot twist for which Komaeda hadn't a single line of his role in hand, and so he was improvising like a no-good actor who was both terrified and ecstatic about how unexpectedly well he was in it.

The restaurant had came alive, when Owari arrived, then Souda; Mioda burst there exuding her usual barely tolerable enthusiasm. Komaeda welcomed all of them, but stayed distant from the friendly chat that gradually kindled between the others. There were days when he could end up being engaged into that crowd without giving it much thought, sitting among them in the middle of the hall, and no one even tried to shut him up. By accident or not, they were mostly those exact days when Hajime was there. That morning Komaeda woke up with the totally opposite mood. Not good and not bad – just not the mood which encouraged him to take part in anything.

Few small tea leaves were floating on the bottom of his cup. Komaeda was watching them a bit more closely than it was appropriate while thinking out how you can possibly spend the whole day on an island. It was usually the only crucial task he and the rest of Jabberwock's residents faced every new morning – and they had to proceed with it well to live peacefully and comfortably there for all of those years. Komaeda's table provided a very nice view, and if he had happened to borrow the book, which he started reading the day before, beforehead, he would have came up with a considerable idea already. But in fact he had to get back to the cottage first, then return to the restaurant which most likely still would be too noisy for reading... Nagito was still weighing the pros and cons of it when Koizumi suddenly appeared near him. Loud sounds of conversations were still floating in the restaurant's space, and nobody was paying attention to her or Komaeda. After making sure that he noticed her being stopped by his table, the girl asked.

"Are you alright?"

Frequently, Komaeda forgot that he shoudn't have been surprised. He was included, always, and stood aside only when he wanted this himself. Come to think of it, it was the echo of his old habit too: this confidence that everything which involved him had to be initiated by him first and foremost. In other words, if he wanted to be noticed – he had to do something for it, otherwise he would stay at his own corner, and he could use it everytime he needed it.

Though, it didn't work when Hajime was with him. In fact it didn't work anymore at all. The most difficult to Komaeda was to realize and memorize the second part.

"Yes, sure," he answered.

"Are you going to come with us?"

Komaeda needed few seconds to find track of the conversation and understand what Koizumi had asked. That's it, he actually heard something about going to the beach on the second island from their discussion before he got distracted a little bit. He had heard and kept it in his mind somehow only thanks to his observer's talent – the second and the unofficial one, – because he couldn't even relate this information to himself in any way. Of course, it depended only on him whether it was going to be related to him or not. Just one more thing he had spent years to get used to.

"It would be awful to reject such a nice invitation... but I'm afraid that it's what I do this time."

"Don't exaggerate it like that, it's fine. I just wanted to make sure that you... have thought it out."

Mahiru had to put an effort into finishing her point properly when Komaeda got it right away and much better than she expressed it in the end.

"Have a good time you all," Nagito wished.

"Thanks. Same for you," Koizumi answered just politely, but the smile on her face seemed quite genuine.

Tea leaves stuck to his tongue, giving off a slight bitterness, when Komaeda did the last gulp of cold tea and turned his head to the window again. He had been sitting like that until the last person left the restaurant, now even more silent and empty than Komaeda found it firstly. He felt that change; he stood up soon and headed for the stair too. After declining Koizumi's invitation, Nagito wasn't about to rethink his mood suddenly and meet up with his friends on their way to the second island. But Komaeda left the restaurant because of this pure feeling that it happened to lose its most essential part which had been keeping him there.

  


For Komaeda lonely walks on the deserted beach were kind of a meditation he needed from time to time. Sitting on the shore and watching curling waves rolling one by one and being the only sound to break the silence, alongside with the wind and gulls – that was the most obvious thing you can do at a tropical island. Basically, it was the only thing you could do on a tropical island no matter what.

When they were locked on the same island in the simulation and forced to kill each other, almost nobody had a chance to enjoy such solitude on the peaceful coast. Mutual trust, friendship, power of bond, insights of individuals – all of these things suddenly dissapeared once you had this short but piercing sensation of the sobering reality: where you could be just a prey and an easy target. And until the very last moment you wouldn't know the direction of the shot.

In Komaeda's mind it wasn't just a fleeting idea. He was spending time there often even in the program, and more often than anyone else he found himself thinking about how every minute could've became the point of his final countdown starting. His life already became that countdown before the simulation, even before the entered Hope's Peak Academy's hall for the first time. But that was a different kind of feeling. A long waiting for something that bad that it felt so good instead, and vice versa – that was Komaeda's way of thinking during the killing game, while he were existing in two different dimensions of the reality: where he was already dead, and yet alive.

Looking at the ocean and not thinking about death – probably, it wasn't as weird for him as it could be for any of his classmates to find out that he was experiencing such feeling. On the other hand, he considered the possibility that all of them, in their own different but still alike ways, had some form of this feeling, when Jabberwock quitted being their prison.

Komaeda dusted off the thin sand cover from the large boulder, which was the great spot to sit. Water was wirled just a couple of metres away from him; Nagito pulled up his legs and leaned on the rock with the soles to avoid soaking shoes. He gave the bay a long look, while slightly closing the eyes to the bright sun sparkling at the ocean's surface all the way of the horizon's line. Few small and torned clouds were slowly crossing the sky and melting to uncover more of its saturated blue. The refreshing breeze were coming from the harbor, and Komaeda acknowledged that it was surplisingly chilly for a midday.

Most of days at Jabberwock were similar – and it was quite easy to get lost in the flow of time like that, but they were tracking days and months, everyone were, so they could celebrate birthdays and other holidays, or at least keep sanity on the island which was habitated only thanks to 77-th class itself. That was why Komaeda knew well that Hajime were absent for six days so far.

Nagito found unbelievable how they, former Remnants of Despair, were allowed to go on just like that, have a peaceful life in the world which were still suffering the consequences of their mistakes. They even were formally recruited into the Future Foundation, but that took a place most likely for the sake of keeping the enemy where you can see him, from the FF's point. They had their own duties due to that circumstance: all of them had a chance to go back to the big land at least once to contribute to recreating the world they destroyed by their own hands. From the shade and in a complete secret from the society, because Komaeda and his classmates' honour wasn't so easy to retrieve neither in, like, five years, nor probably even in ten. There was a possibility for them to spend the rest of their lifes hiding at the Jabberwock Island – at least they had the foundation's support now – and they would never leave it again, and the story of their atonement would be known by just few people in the whole world and humanity's history. Komaeda didn't consider that something good, or something bad: it was fair, that's all.

And he had no problems with that. Nagito had spent a lot of years in search, in his attempts to find reasons of his own existance and reasons to continue it at least a little bit more. His brain, being trapped in the sickness, transformed the vague, intuitive concept into something absurdly exaggerated, but even such excessive expectations couldn't compete with what Komaeda got. He had been dreaming about withnessing the greatest hope's birth, but he wasn't just a witness in the end, he was a part of it. And every single day which passed since then was the epitome of that hope: how the burned to the ground world was rebuilding again; how all of them were still alive and – despite everything – could be happy. There was hope in every small breath, smelling like salt and sea, Komaeda inhaled into his lungs. He had nothing else to wish.

Hinata was the closest to the foundation among them. Kamukura Izuru's talents – despite of the whole unpleasant story surrounding them and Kamukura himself – were too useful and convenient for the organization to leave him alone. In previous years Hajime were spending as much time on the mainland as on the island, and even now, when the most of Jabberwock's residents, including Komaeda, put down a root there, Hinata being off wasn't something... out of place. And still – not as frequent as it used to be back then. News from the continent which Komaeda usually heared was about things getting a lot better there.

Six days later gazing into the ocean, Komaeda saw the dark spot in the distance. It was too far away and being eclipsed solid by the sun's glare to make out anything, but it had no chance to get into the usual archipelago's landscape unnoticed. Catching the change, Komaeda had froze up and pierced his eyes into the horizon and, after confirming that they weren't just fooling him or made him see what he wanted to see, let himself exhale loudly.

Jabberwock was the only possible destination for any ship passing by in these waters. And with a great, almost one hundred percent possibility only one person needed to get there at that moment.


	2. Chapter 2

By getting closer to the coaster, that spot had formed into a ferry before Komaeda arrived to the dock. Nagito got slower and sticked around at a distance from the pier, watching how it was coming there. Not as big as that liner they used to get off the island for the first time after they woke up, and then return, but the quite large ship stopped, drifting on small waves, and its inside got buzzled.

Komaeda was waiting patiently and looking through the people who had already went ashore: few men in black suits showed up, and sounds of their talk broke the long silence that Komaeda had already used to. He heared the familiar voice first, and then the face, which he could see well enough from his spot, turned to him: Hajime was looking the other way speaking with someone – Komaeda couldn't recognize the rest of the people, but didn't even need that, – and the lively but slightly worn out smile belied his fatigue.

But he still – still, now, and before, and then, and ever – looked amazing, Komaeda thought so loud that it wasn't so far from being heared both by the ship's crew and the whole Jabberwock Island, for sure.

By the context of the talk Komaeda concluded that they were saying goodbye at that point. He did a step forward, and it was that exact moment when Hinata finally catched his sight. They both headed towards each other.

Without giving Hajime a chance to greet him properly, Komaeda ripped off the distance between them and crushed into his lips with an impatient, almost rough kiss. Hinata reeled, and Komaeda barely managed to keep his balance himself, already thinking – if his mind could process any thought at all – how upleasant and long the cleaning his hair from sand was going to be, but Hajime's hands grabbed his elbows softly, helping him to stand upstraight. With a wordless consent, he welcomed his mouth opening his own, and Nagito's head went blank eventually.

Komaeda had lost a dozen of inhales already, and that was why he finally broke the kiss. His diaphragm kept refusing to work normal yet when Hinata, breathless as well, stared at him with a mix of dumbfounding and amuse.

"Seems that it's really Jabberwock."

Komaeda laughed muffledly and gazed at him saying nothing. His face was definitely so ridiculous with that widening dumb smile on it, but he wasn't disturbed by that at all, as long as those different colored eyes was looking directly at him. It was so normal, so natural: to stand with Hajime like that; just a few minutes earlier Komaeda felt nothing more than serene content about things going back to how they were supposed to be after six flawed days. But in the end there were suddenly much more of happiness and excitement in him than he actually expected.

"But I'm glad to see you, too," Hajime added.

The selfishness meter in Komaeda's head started ticking as the warning to put his joy aside for a bit. Through the euphoria, he evaluated the situation quickly.

"You probably want to change clothes... or take a shower."

"Sure, but I would rather eat first. I've overslept and skipped the breakfast."

Komaeda was smiling soflty, but resenting to himself how come that worthless organization let such a valuable person stay hungry.

"There is nobody including Hanamura-kun in the restaurant right now, but I think we still should be able to find something."

Hinata nodded, and they headed to the road which could bring them to the cottages side.

Considering how quiet it was around and he couldn't feel even a glipse of anyone's presense, Komaeda assumed that he was right and nobody had returned from the second island yet. They found the restaurant just like how Komaeda left and remembered it going away after the breakfast this morning.

"That makes me think, where are the rest?" Hajime asked reasonably.

"They planned to go to the beach."

"And you..?" he started slowly, expecting that Komaeda would be the one to finish the sentence.

"And I planned to welcome you back properly," Nagito answered without a second thought.

They stopped at the middle of the restaurant's hall when Hinata slowed down to take a judging look on Komaeda, who wasn't flustered at all, and finally said pretty sceptically.

"You didn't know that I was going to get back today."

"Yes, but it seems I was lucky."

Hajime snickered not so subtly, so Komaeda let himself note.

"Would you rather like me to give you an opportunity to sneak onto the island and lock yourself in the cottage enjoying your bed which is no longer occupied by anyone else?"

Komaeda spent a lot of time and practice to learn how to say something like that in jest, though classmates' confused faces often told him that he still sounded too serious. But at least Hajime usually could feel his real intention.

"Stop it," Hinata gave him a croocked smile and frowned, then streched his hand fast towards Komaeda's head. Nagito was expecting that he would pinch his ear, or pat his hair gently but insistently; however Hajime hesitated, and finally his palm slided down Komaeda's cheek.

The grimace, which had been scowling his face for a while, faded, and Hinata said calmly, lowering the voice a little.

"Forget that. I really have nothing to complain about."

They had a mute dinner. Komaeda didn't dare to bother Hinata, seemingly being tired by trip and work, with talks, so he grabbed a bite and was humbly waiting and watching him, trying not to stare too much. In the end nobody had appeared at the restaurant before they left it. 

Komaeda got down to the couch with a book when water's noises started coming from the bathroom. He barely could call his current mood suitable for attentive, immersed reading, but it was the only way for him to kill some time before... before what? Komaeda more than ever wanted to enjoy Hinata's presence, and it wasn't even important for him how: would they do small talks or deep conversations, walk together or move on to something else Komaeda wouldn't mind doing after six days of being apart. But he couldn't press Hajime for it when the first thing he probably wanted was rest. Komaeda was teasing him when he offered the other man to hide from everyone including himself, but Nagito wasn't going to object that he could've have been serious about it if Hinata had wanted.

When he managed to read four pages and understand what he had read more or less somehow, water stopped. Hinata entered the room in nothing but a towel on his thighs, and Komaeda didn't acknowledge how his neck straightened and the sight crawled up, totally leaving the book, so he could enjoy such a wonderful view. Better than in a suit, Hajime, for sure, looked only without it.

The almost awkward pause between them had been lasting since the moment Hinata glared at him back, until he broke the distance with a couple of wide steps and leaned over Komaeda.

"H-Hajime, what are you doing?" he mumbled, guardless. Such a forceful presence, the heat of his hand being warmed by hot water, which were pushed into the couch's back somewhere too close to his neck, were nurturing that suddenly taking over him – and growing rapidly – feel of helplessness.

"You can't take your eyes off me for the whole day. I can do the same, can't I?" Hinata pointed derisively; he was just terribly close, so every breath of him, the sound of every single word ran over Komaeda's face.

In some surprising, mysterious way he was able to handle that look and keep his voice relatively calm.

"At least get dressed."

"Why?"

"Or I would consider it as a suggestion."

"Who says it can't be a suggestion?"

"But Hajime, you'll have to take a shower once again."

Hajime laughed not so loud and pulled away, but in the way he turned his head with a hint of embarassment before heading to the wardrobe, Komaeda saw a sign of his own victory.

"He've got loads of time for that," Hajime mumbled to himself, and Nagito pretended leniently that he didn't hear.

Komaeda got back to the book, listening to the rustling of clothes. Hajime's presence was so calming, and Komaeda could barely recall how it was like before: when they were living in different cottages and met each other at breakfasts to part by an evening again. Even when Hinata was away, Komaeda stayed there, being surrounded by his stuff, his scent, his footsteps' sound being stuck in the air. And it was something Komaeda could call just right.

A heavy thud from the bedside, creasing the shits and neatly flattened blanket – Komaeda highlighted it in his mind without breaking away from reading. Hajime exhaled the long breath; it was so cozy that Komaeda had to hold back the yawn.

"What's new here?"

Komaeda turned his head while listing leisurely.

"Last Friday Sonia-san slapped Hanamura-kun's face so harsh for another innapropriate joke that he still has bruise; Mioda-san broke the guitar, which Asahina-san and Hagakure-kun brang last time, against a pillar during her last practice; and Souda-kun almost let off fireworks into himself."

"Well, that was a nice recap of everything happen here like... every week?" Hajime chuckled croockedly.

"I thought that after seeing an unstable overseas world you would like to be reminded that you can always count on Jabberwock," Komaeda responded with a tranquil smile.

For a moment Hinata froze slightly confused, keeping his head above the pillow.

"Actually... it does make sense."

"How surprising that sometimes it really does, for things I say," Komaeda agreed, expecting a backlash with a kind of friskiness.

"Hey, I know you're doing it on purpose, but this isn't an excuse," Hajime exclaimed.

Komaeda could've continued to fool around, but the pushed, unpleasant smile on Hinata's face looked like a limit of his patience and willingness to play along.

"Sorry, it probably wasn't a good way to tease you," Komaeda gave up, though it seemed like he wasn't so regretful for real.

"It's fine unless you don't mean it," Hajime sighed. "Better come here already."

He couldn't imagine more clear invitation. Komaeda put the book aside and relocated to the bed where he got into an embrace immediately – the long-awaited embrace. Nagito sighed quietly, feeling waves of pleasure spreading across his whole body when he pressed the cheek against Hajime's shoulder. 

"How did things go?" he asked after a while, when he had enjoyed the moment enough.

"Fine... I have not much to tell this time as well. That was mostly about rides and paperwork."

"They really shouldn't bother you with trivial matters like this," Nagito complained. 

"To be honest, I think that they don't bother me as much as they can," Hajime chuckled nervously.

The cry of a seagull passing by broke into the room through the opened window: it was that loud that Komaeda got to actually hear and keep it in his thoughts for a second.

He would been satisfied enough even if they didn't say a word for another few hours. Nagito didn't mind to soak into the bed complelety and surrender to that sweet drowsiness he got caught into; and then open his eyes – just twenty minutes later or tomorrow's morning, nevermind – and discover that nothing had changed and Hajime was still there.

"We probably have to let everyone know that I'm here," Hajime thought out loud.

"They may be still on the beach," Komaeda murmured into the other guy's shirt. "They will get back by the evening, for the dinner."

"You're just searching for excuses to not get out of bed," Hajime messed the hair on the back of his head, to smooth them back to Nagito's neck then with his fingertips, gently and slowly. If Hinata had wanted to blame him for such thing, he wouldn't have given him reasons to keep on doing it, would he?

"Have you lured me here to start mocking me for just agreeing to join you? Not so fair, Hinata-kun."

They started to call each other by their first names years ago, but once in a while Komaeda used this change: sometimes – when he was not so pleased for serious, and on the other hand – when he just wanted to make Hajime think so.

"Okay, that was a bad try," Hajime bursted out a muffled, seemingly ashamed laugh. "Last night I slept full nine hours for the first time since I left the island, and I still feel like I haven't got enough of it."

"You shouldn't overwork yourself like that, you know."

"I know, but..." Hajime sighed out an annoyed breath, but he surely addressed it to no one but himself. "It slips my mind every time I get there. I just do what I'm supposed to do and can't stop thinking that if I finish it quick, I can go back home."

"In reality they rather drop another pile of work onto you," Komaeda commented. "Like a teacher who noticed that you've completed the test too fast."

"You're goddamn right," Hinata exclaimed with a laugh.

Komaeda turned the head: the other guy's smile widened on his face. Hajime moved his eyebrows; he opened and then closed his mouth for few times with no words escaping it, before he could finally express it.

"You know, sometimes I regret a bit... about losing our chance to be regular students."

"But we were them, Hajime," Komaeda objected. "Or, well... at least _you_ were them."

Komaeda's school days, when he started recalling it, were complicated due to a lot of things which don't usually happen to "regular students". As well as his whole life was, for that matter. But it could be applied fine to the academy years the rest of 77-th class lived through. And Hinata, who wasn't technically their classmate, had even greater opportunity to experience a normal school life, before he got involved in the Kamukura Project.

So Nagito didn't get what he was trying to say.

"I mean us," Hajime said slowly. "I'm talking about us two."

Komaeda was silent, and it spoke for itself about the confusion which had gone even bigger after such explanation.

"I regret that we didn't know each other before all of this shit started,'' Hinata continued. "We're over our twenties now, and we will be guilty for literally destroying the world for the rest of our lifes, but sometimes it's like I feel more sorry for not being able to have a meal on a schoolyard with you or studying for exams together," Hajime forced out an uneven, tense laugh.

Komaeda hummed pensive.

"Even if we had met each other in Hope's Peak somehow, I still can't imagine how we would have... erm, how we would have kept interacting? Sorry, Hajime, but you do remember how I started to treat you after I found out about the Reserve Course in the simulation. I shouldn't have been acting like that, I was very wrong, but back then... I believed and really meant it. That makes me think that we even could actually meet in school – I just can't recall it, because I would've never paid attention to someone like..."

Komaeda stopped himself, unable to finish the thought he wasn't so eager to develop in his mind from the start. The more he learned to be forgiving to his current himself, the more he occasionally wanted to punch the past Komaeda, whose way of thinking he had to remember and reproduce just a moment before so he could explain those things to Hajime. He had nothing else to disgust him just like that, though he had enough of nauseating memories behind his back. But seeing that himself, who was coming up with one after another dismissive comments about the person who did more for Komaeda in the end then he deserved, was just the worst of them – he wanted to curl up and dissappear.

"Yeah, you're right, but..." Hajime rushed. "And god, Nagito, stop apologizing for something that old, it doesn't matter at all anymore. But what I want to say is... I don't know. I would like it to work somehow. And it would be just... nice?"

"Probably," Komaeda still hadn't thought over the concept which Hajime suddenly tried to show him so rambly, but he was thinking out loud about his idea with such savouring, so Komaeda didn't need to fully understand it to get and support his emotions, because at least he understood Hajime himself.

"I think there is enough of training materials in the library so we can... pretend that we're studying for an exam," Komaeda contemplated. "And it's not a problem to make bentos to eat them outside, though it would be more like a regular picnic... But all of these would probably still be too different from what you're expecting."

"Um, yes, it would look pretty weird," Hajime chuckled awkwardly. "But it's not like going to the library or on picnic together are bad ideas."

"Pretty good ideas, I would say."

"Great, so we have plans for tomorrow already," Hajime turned his head and the hand, resting on Nagito's shoulder blades, and pulled him down a little so Hinata could leave a light but long kiss on the guy's temple.

Hajime's unexpected signs of affection now didn't cause Komaeda to have a small heart attack like before, but he hardly held from whimpering in joy every time he did that.

"To be honest, I've been thinking about it," Hinata added after a while, "since the moment I met Naegi in the academy."

Komaeda had got excited.

"You were there?"

"Well, of course, it looks quite different now, and I hadn't enough time to take a full tour, but... It really made me felt like nothing had ever happened there, everything was just..."

"Normal?" Nagito suggested.

"Yes, kind of."

"I have nothing to compare," Komaeda said, "but I can tell the same about Jabberwock, unless the circumstances of how and why we ended up there."

"I had a small nostalgia episode there," Hinata slighly frowned. "But I feel more comfortable here."

"Because it's our home now," Komaeda remarked.

"And not the worst possible, I have to say."

"Better than I've ever expected to find."

Komaeda didn't intend to say it out loud and all the more he didn't realize that it was going to sound so... sad? He wasn't even sad, but probably he hadn't been realizing it unless Hajime gazed at him with a smooth pity. Another soft, warm kiss, to his forehead that time – Komaeda closed his eyes.

"It's time to get out of there. A little more and we'll start looking through our childhood photos and cry."

"But we don't have them anymore."

"And it's already enough to cry," Hinata added sarcastically. It wasn't supposed to be funny, but Komaeda chuckled.

He rose unwillingly, freeing Hajime's arm he had under himself. Hinata, who complained about his lack of energy earlier, got up much more eager than Komaeda could. But the attraction of the bed eased when he had left there alone. If Hinata wanted to go meet everyone for serious, Komaeda hadn't good reasons to protest: they had been spending hours together since the moment he got back; the mere thought of being the only person on the island who knew that Hinata had come back so far could meet Komaeda's selfish needs for a week. 

They'd got loads of time, after all.

When they came out of the cottage, Komaeda immediately felt the strong impression of presence floating in the air: there were Souda and Kuzuryuu hanging out near the pool. At the hotel's side few more people could be seen. Hinata stopped by to greet friends; Komaeda was watching silently, staring at Kazuichi's forehead with a red sunburn on it which – according to the shape – was clumsily cropped by sunglasses.

By the time they entered the restaurant, everyone had already gathered there.

"Hinata-san!" Sonia exclaimed. "If we had knew that you were going to be back today, we would have..."

"It means," Mioda interrupted her loudly, "that tomorrow we're going to the beach again! We haven't passed the loyalty test, but Ibuki always knows what to do, love Ibuki ya'll!"

"Um... Loyalty test?" Hajime repeated. "No one said you can't have fun without me..."

"Yup, but it's like an exam failed by everyone but one folk. It would have been okay if we had screwed up all together, but we had a traitor among us!" she shouted and glanced at Komaeda.

"I though that passing a loyalty test meant that you wasn't a traitor, not the other way around," Komaeda pointed.

"Okay, you know, it's a weird topic," Koizumi stepped in. "Let's not blame anyone for anything, even as a joke. Komaeda was just lucky enough to... oh."

Mahiru stopped talking after she'd realized that it wasn't necessary to finish a line like that one. Komaeda heared a couple of muffled laughs before he chuckled quietly too.

The rest of the evening was just like they were used to spend it together. If Komaeda hadn't been sure about it, he might've doubted for good reasons that Hajime was the one to be back to the island after a while and not him.

Hajime – without him, Jabberwock and it's mere atmosphere wasn't complete to Komaeda, and he could've never called such place home because of how he would've felt towards it, and it was normal, absolutely natural, and predictable to the core. But it seemed to Komaeda that everyone there felt something similar. Hinata might be the most special person on the island for Komaeda only. But all of them was calling him their classmate despite of the contradicting truth. It wasn't important when and how he ended up as one of them – but it was something much more significant and powerful than just his school profile being in the particular folder or a note in the class' journal.

Hinata Hajime was the person in who Komaeda finally recognized the glistening of that hope he had been reaching for. And after that, it ceased to matter that much. Because the only thing which mattered turned out to be that he was just himself – Hinata Hajime.


	3. Chapter 3

After broking his face away from the pillow, Komaeda found that the sun was already up. Window blinds never saved him from it: even being closed completely, they still let thin light stripes into the room, and sooner or later, due to Earth's rotation, one of them woke Komaeda up in the morning, hitting him right into the eye.

That was how he started to sleep on his stomach.

Rolling to his side with a sleepy clumsiness, Nagito saw Hajime lying on his back and staring at the ceiling with so astonishing wide opened eyes, which also were blinking so fast... In other words, he was giving an impression of a person who had been awake for at least few hours by that moment.

"What time is it?" Komaeda asked quietly.

Hajime turned his head to him.

"It's only nine. Good morning," he added after a small pause.

Komaeda murmured something in response, which should probably mean the same, and curled up grabbing and hugging the crumpled blanket.

One or two minutes later he opened his eyes a bit and started to watch Hajime. Komaeda had to get a little more awake to notice that the other guy wasn't actually that cheerful: with his hand under the head Hinata was slowly observing the room with a blank stare; small wisps of light were reflecting beautifully in his messed up hair. His bare chest were going up and down smoothly, and Komaeda witnessed his own second eye opening unwittingly while he was gazing at it.

The ship sailed from Jabberwock four days ago. Though it wasn't like Komaeda had reasons to remember that.

"Hanamura promised tiger prawns for today's breakfast," Hajime said.

"My stomach haven't woke up yet to feel anything about it," Komaeda laughed it off.

"We don't have to get up right now," Hinata turned to Nagito completely, moving a little closer. "Just... keep that in mind. The world outside the bed exists. And it's not that bad."

Hajime pronounced every sentence slowly one by one. It sounded a bit of an auto-suggestion's attempt.

"Sure, it's truly stunning," Komaeda agreed. "I just need some time to remember it again every morning."

"We have to establish chores' plan for the next week today," Hinata continued rather thinking out loud than actually refering to anyone. "We haven't cleaned for a while. And I think I saw the roof in the beach house leaking."

Komaeda liked when Hajime started to speak to himself, even if the subject wasn't so interesting. He enjoyed the serene, heartfelt silence between them, but when Hajime was talking literally anything without caring what to say too much – Nagito could listen to him until the end of time. Besides, the fact that Hinata could think out loud in front of him meant that he really trusted him a lot.

He reached his hand forward to slightly run his fingertip over Hinata's collarbone where the purple mark were flourishing. It could've been left higher, but that way it was easier to hide with a shirt. Hajime responded with a pause and long thoughtful look at Komaeda.

"Fine," he said soon. "You may take it slow, but I'm getting out of there."

Hajime sat up and touched the floor with his feet.

"Okay, but I'm probably lying on some of your clothes," Komaeda smiled blithely.

"Count it as a victory in this case," Hajime gave him a snarky answer, while pulling his boxers on the thighs.

Komaeda based the head on his hand, watching Hinata lazily. The more clothes appeared on him, the less comfy Nagito felt covered by just a piece of the blanket on the messy bed, which for some reason wasn't so appealing anymore. He got up too.

While Komaeda was squeezing himself into his pants, Hajime opened the blinds with a noisy creaking. The world outside really wasn't bad at all.

There wasn't a lot of people in the restaurant, and Komaeda might only wonder from what global conspiracy, without letting them know, that day started: from everyone deciding to wake up much earlier or much later than usual. He was finishing his breakfast, while Hajime was discussing that leaking roof with Togami aside.

Future Foundation's members rarely showed themselves on the island: and it was good, because most of Komaeda's friends were irritated by them in the way the one can be irritated by visitis of annoying distant relatives or a police officer. But that also meant that most of the time they were left on their own, and it caused either some privileges and various kinds of difficulties. In the Neo World Program (no matter should've they killed each other or not) they wouldn't have needed to fix a ruined roof or a floor. Served tables were waiting for them every morning at the restaurant, and they didn't gave much thought to who was rensponsible for it. For the whole time in the simulation they hadn't experienced a storm or an extreme heat for once.

On the real Jabberwock Island they had neither Usami nor Monokuma to set optimal surrounding's options for them and serve prawns for breakfast. The life on the island still was much more peaceful than the one they could face on the mainland: they were brought food, medications, any essential supplies and sometimes not so essential stuff, but they still had to care about cooking, cleanliness and safety. Though, an alternation of activities like that made their isolated life balanced and kept them from a destructive boredom.

"Fine, ready to go?" finishing the conversation, Hinata returned to the table.

"Sure. Though it would be great to know where."

"We can take a walk to the seaside, to begin with," he suggested.

Komaeda stood up agreeing with no words.

At the hotel's exit they nearly got crushed by Tsumiki. Saving her from another too memorable fall none of them two wanted to witness, Hajime carefully catched nurse's shoulders.

"Tsumiki... is everything all right?"

"W-wha..?" Mikan bounced up, staring blank at Hajime first, then glanced at Komaeda, and after that she looked back at Hajime again to take her eyes off him awkwardly. "Y-yes, it's all right. I'm sorry!"

And she rushed into the restaurant even faster.

"She looks kind of anxious," Hinata concluded, making a quick look over his shoulder.

"Tsumiki-san hardly ever looks not anxious at all," Komaeda reminded. "I think she's fine, or we'll know the details later."

"You're right, I guess," Hajime said, but almost questioning.

"Others' problems can be out of your business sometimes," Nagito added in response. "Oh, did it sound too rude?"

"It souded realistic," Hinata gave off a nervous laugh. "Okay, nevermind. Let's go."

"You're just so considerate to everyone," Komaeda said, following his footsteps.

Jabberwock was a nice place. It fitted the image of the tropical paradise from bright and eye-catching photos being printed in touristic magazines promoting highly rated resorts very well. Hardly surprising, since it actually was a big, well-maintained resort being flooded by tourists in high season in the past.

But occasionally, just like a person on not of one of his best days, he could look much less photogenic. They followed the shoreline, and Komaeda kept noticing dropped out seewead spreading on the coast; muddy waves were rubbing it against sand.

Hinata slowed down near the fallen palmtree.

"Wow," Komaeda got a long face.

"The wind was rough last night," Hajime recalled. "It was blowing pretty loud."

"Really? I didn't hear."

"Well, not as loud as you was," Hinata giggled.

With an innocent smile, Komaeda tried to hide his heart gone too noisy in his chest for a moment.

"I take it as a compliment."

Hinata slighly punched the tree truck stretched on the ground. It was hard to imagine how such massive tree could've ended up being the one which had lost to the disaster, but it probably was just old or rotten.

"Better to move it off later."

"We can do umbrellas out of its leaves," Komaeda noted. "For the beach or the pool."

"Yeah... though probably only one."

"The strong wind might leave fallen leaves all over the island. We'll have to clean up them anyway."

"Umm... probably?"

"But it may be actually a waste of time," Komaeda concluded and sat on the bench the palm tree was now providing. "I haven't heard anyone complaining about having not enough of umbrellas."

"It's hard to call anything a waste of time here," Hajime smirked. "No, that's... this idea is okay, we need to get rid of this palm somehow anyway. I myself think that we can saw it for boards."

"I've just been coming up with pointless ideas all the time here," Komaeda said. "I mean, here and now they actually don't seem so pointless if I don't start to think about it."

"It's called enjoying the little things, Nagito," Hinata sat down next to him. "That's how... normal people usually live."

"Yes, the normal life," he spoke, "I'm not trying to say that it's something wrong with this. But I'm not the only one who took plenty of time to get into loving it."

"I think it's something you start to value once you lose it," Hajime spoke, but his tone made Komaeda realize that he chose a quite sensitive topic. He turned his head and looked at Hinata, but he already rushed to change it. 

"Where would you like to go then?"

"We can go to the cinema," Nagito started thinking aloud. "But I think we had watched everything in its collection, like, a year ago."

"Damn," Hinata remembered. "I have to bring something new here next time, finally."

"I'm sure you usually have more important things to deal with at your work," Komaeda had to remind, because the way Hajime said it seemed like he was scolding himself for not doing it so far.

"Well, I just don't have it on my mind in time."

"Furthermore, we have television."

"But it's such a waste when we have our own theater!" Hinata raised hands. "And you don't watch TV."

"So it all was just to flirt with me, Hajime?" Komaeda went teasy.

"No, but if you would like it that much..."

Warm breath touched his cheeck, and then short but deep kiss covered his lips.

"It's... not a flirt at this point," Nagito gasped whispering.

"But you don't seem to mind."

"Of course I don't," Nagito exhaled, embracing Hinata's neck with his arms and pressing his lips back to his mouth. Hajime put his hands under Komaeda's coat and placed them on his back. 

If anyone had crossed the seashore at that moment and witnessed them, it would have been... not so terribly awkward. Of course, their relationship wasn't a secret to anyone on the island: even a couple of crabs on the coast probably knew and saw more than they surely had ever wanted to know. They two already avoided a bunch of more-than-just-terribly-awkward situations to care about being caught just kissing, even if it was going to be awkward at least to whoever saw it. But only a couple of seagulls had passed by above their heads by the moment Komaeda put his cheek on Hinata's shoulder in the most pure, platonic way. Much more platonic than his leg resting over Hajime's hip was.

"You know, Hajime," he spoke after a while, "it's not a big need to bring something from the mainland. Come to think of it, we can film something ourselves."

"Oh, yeah?.." Hinata started with a bit of confusion, but undisguised scepticism could be already heared in this voice.

"It's possible in theory," Komaeda exclaimed. "Souda-kun can prepare and setup an equipment. Koizumi-san is a photographer, but she should be able to handle a videocamera too. Mioda-san is a musician, Owari-san would feet a stuntwoman's role well... And you can do literally anything. We would make a great film crew, don't you think?"

"I think that the umbrellas idea was fine," Hinata smirked.

"But we really can do a lot of things together, even here," Komaeda highlighted. "Isn't this wonderful?"

"I guess," Hinata agreed, suddenly seeming to go into his inner thoughts. Sensing this weird change, Komaeda almost had asked what he had been thinking about, but Hajime started speaking first.

"If you don't have, erm... more grounded ideas how we can kill some time right now, I feel like I have one."

"And what's it?"

Hinata stood up and pulled Nagito's hand with him gently. Komaeda's curiousity was easy to burn and were tickling him from the inside, but he followed Hajime holding back his questions.

They left the beach and went their whole way back to the cottages in silence: Komaeda had been waiting for Hajime to speak first and explain where and why they had been heading, or start a normal talk which Nagito could catch... but he hesitated to just do it himself already.

When they stopped in front of the gates, Komaeda had almost surrendered to the desire of begging Hinata to tell him what he was going to do, but Hajime got few steps ahead and stalled him.

"Wait here, I'll be right back."

"If you say so," he wiggled the head and leaned against the fence, following Hajime just by his sight. 

Komaeda didn't like surprises: the unknown didn't usually intimidate him, but he was uncomrtable with that uncertainty which... went out of his control. Every time he got into the situation and couldn't foresee its outcome at all, and would probably even prefer not to foresee it, he dealt it by being prepared to any possible conclusion and its circumstances. Every time his plan got ruined, it appeared to be the part of his plan as well.

Hinata Hajime broke into his life as the biggest and the most unpredictable, uncontrollable and utterly undealable thing to ruin every plan he had at that point. And the outcome of it was how predictably Komaeda loved him.

Hajime was back with a large black bag on his shoulder, which wasn't as self-talking for Nagito as the camera hanging by a strap around his neck. Hinata left to cottages side, so he could go back with such haul from only one particular person.

"How did you know that Koizumi-san is home?" he asked.

"I didn't know. Just a luck."

"Seems you settled into it pretty easy," Komaeda commented, referring to his own talent he had been counting on for his life being poisoned by it as well before Hajime appeared and changed that.

"Can't argue that it's convenient," he said, fiddling around with the camera. "Especially when I don't have to shoot anyone. Okay, the horrible joke."

Komaeda shut up his mouth with his own hand stuffing back his laugh over "the horrible joke", but it was probably too late.

"Well, maybe not that horrible."

"And what's in the bag?"

"Some extra equipment and stuff," Hinata responded evasively. "If we hadn't shared the photographer's talent, she would have never lended me all of these, not even under fear of death."

"So, why do you need a camera?" finally Komaeda asked directly.

"Let's go back to the beach and you'll know. But to the second island. I've just heard that Nidai and Tanaka have cleaned it this morning."

It hadn't satisfied Komaeda's curiosity, not even a little bit, but he still had some patience to spare. Besides, a mixture of hope and experience made him feel that Hajime wasn't supposed to be a dissapointment.

***

Calling a beach private on the island, which was inhabited by just sixteen people, was ridiculous. But Komaeda wouldn't say it didn't differ from a "public" one – now peaceful and deserted as well, – actually, it did. Somehow coming there every time, he could sense that change even if couldn't explain clearly what seemed off. The small cove, being surrounded by steep cliffs, radiated pleasing seclusion atmosphere. Such spirit must be vanished immediately when the most of 77-th class raided the coast, filling the air with talks, noises and laughs, but only one or two people coming there at once could truly experience and understand the real charm of this place. 

Komaeda stopped not far from water. Hajime slowed down to leave the bag by the beach house's wall. Nagito was following him with his eyes, while the other guy was leisurely walking towards him, staring seriously at the display of the digital camera and configuring it.

He directed the objective on the ocean and did few shots with shutter's sounds.

"Sorry for keeping you wait," he said once he was beside Komaeda again. "I need some time to prepare."

"Prepare to what?" Komaeda, who just had started to enjoy the moment how it already was, got into even bigger confusion than before.

"Do you really think we're here to make some scenery pictures?"

Hajime straightened the camera's strap being twisted around his neck.

"Just give me a minute. You know, it's so weird when you've never really tried something, but still know perfectly how to do it, and the result... well, is just too good?"

"It's not weird when it's you," Komaeda delicately reminded. He himself used to go deeply awed from the mere thought that Hinata was literally ultimately good in anything. However, Komaeda rethought and understood a lot over the years. So Hajime was just his Hajime – with Izuru's talents or without them. But, the same way a black costume or heterochromia did it, they... just suited him so well.

"But still, it feels weird."

Hinata did a couple more test shots. Komaeda would gladly look at them, but before he could even come up with this idea, Hajime turned around – with his head, body and the camera – to face him.

"Hmm, so they usually tell you to say cheese?"

"H-Hajime?"

Komaeda froze being caught off guard, but he got it together then... and he honestly wasn't pleased with that. He had not so many chances in his life to be in the center of a picture. Neither family nor friends to make group shots with... and all the more, he didn't have a single person who would waste their precious time to take photos of him alone. Komaeda simply hadn't ever posed before.

"Hajime, I don't think that..."

Inevitable feel of discomfort he would surely suffer in a such situation was however overshadowed by another thought. Could he just reject Hajime's idea, which already had stolen his time and energy, just because of his selfish motives? Hinata obviously was trying to... create something for them both. A mood, an atmosphere, just a chance to have a great time together? Komaeda didn't wanted to be the one to ruin it all.

Swallowing the rest of his line, Komaeda inhaled deeply and forced out a nervous smile.

He couldn't just hide it though.

"If you mind, we can forget it and go back. But I really want you to give me a chance."

Give him a chance? But he surely wasn't the person who could decide something like that, no matter what Hinata meant, how could he just say something so...

"I... I just don't know what to do," Komaeda spluttered.

"Actually," Hajime spoke stepping aside a litte, "maybe you're better not to pose and just, erm... do the oposite. Try to imagine that there is no any cameras. And stroll down the beach."

The advice itself sounded clear and made sense. Of course, it didn't help Komaeda at all.

Hajime, meanwhile, walked away pretty far. If Nagito had turned his back to him, he could've probably made himself think that he came there all alone. But Hajime's presence, especially with the camera, was too sensible. It never had been the thing Komaeda could forgot so easily. 

But letting himself go numb in embarassment or push out a bunch of pityful, half-assed attempts to play along with Hajime was much worse than rejecting him from the beginning. Komaeda took a look at the horizon and tried to concentrate on the sun sparkling along it. That thoughtless overdone try only ended up for his eyes to be hurt by light. Komaeda covered them with his hand.

Turning his head, he couldn't even spot Hajime again right away. Komaeda heared frequent clicks of the shutter and tried not to think how every shot had been imprinting his lost, tortured face and petrified shoulders.

He tried to walk across the seashore how Hinata adviced. But even without seeing himself with someone else's eyes, he felt how a single uncautious step could screw it all up for sure any moment. Unconsciously, he got his eyes stuck to his feet.

"Hey, Nagito."

Komaeda rose his head and looked at Hajime, who had called him, meeting his sight. He was now holding the camera lower – at the level of his chest – and watched him straight, without that additional layer of the lens. And he was smiling: vaguely, not because of something particular or to any kind of his own thought for sure, but that's was it. That was one of those moments when Komaeda turned and suddenly found that he was looking at him and – oh god – smiling, smiling just because it was him, Komaeda, and Komaeda couldn't do anything and didn't wanted to do anything with the fact that he just... felt exactly the same.

Letting it last long enough, Hajime spoke.

"See? It doesn't hurt to just give it a shot."

That was the silliest pun Komaeda had ever heard in his life, but he couldn't hold the laugh.

He fliched a bit when Hajime rose the camera quickly again and pushed the button without any warnings, but an unexpected calmness, which embraced Komaeda, didn't let the smile get washed off his face.

He would never forget such a notable detail and couldn't loosen up to the full, but even when Hinata went very close with his camera Komaeda took it easy, naturally going further with their small talk: pointless, more like an exchange of random thoughts between them two. But Nagito was enjoying it just like that.

"Alright, I think that's enough," Hajime concluded.

"May I take a look?" Komaeda asked growing wary. Of course, there wouldn't be much sense in all of it if he refused to see the outcome... but serenity of the moment he had just found with such a big effort got covered with a thin ice shell coming from freezing anxiety running all over Komaeda's back. How shameful was it going to be for him? With his ultimate talent Hinata couldn't have done bad pictures, but what if he, Komaeda, was hopeless enough to tarnish even his brilliant works?

"Yeah, just a second, I'll delete failed ones first."

Komaeda got prepared to the waiting being long as hell, but Hajime went through the shots uncanilly fast, like the buttons were no less than just extensions of his own fingers, and lended him the camera carefully.

It took some time to Nagito to review what was going on the picture. His very first expression, even before he actually recognized what he was looking at, was outburst somewhere deeply inside, in his head, like an instant compulsion saying: no matter what he was looking at, it was something unbelievably beautiful.

Ripping himself out of this pervading stupor, Komaeda continued to examine the photo closely. Certainly, it couldn't be anything by that beach where he and Hinata were standing just that moment. The reason why Nagito couldn't correlate it with reality right away was that it just was better than reality. Any average person who had ever tried to capture something beautiful with a camera was at least once hit by dissapointment that the view left on the screen was quite far from being as beautiful as they saw it with their own eyes. But looking at the photograph Hinata made, Komaeda was back in time with his thoughts, in that moment when he was standing besides waltzing waves and looking at the horizon glowing with sun; and at the same time, digging deeper and dipper into the picture, he was getting amazed with how much he didn't actually saw. How many sun glares were actually weaving on the water's surface, how many colors were composing the world around him and how many of them he couldn't even name. The humming of water and the wind, gulls, spatters and salt – he could magically travel to absolutely different place, but he would keep hearing and feeling all of those as long as he was holding the camera in this hands.

Being lost in that view, Komaeda flipped through this shot; he had already competely forgot why it had even been done in the first place. He could miss his own shadowed silhouette, turned to him with his back, but when on the next photo the face had literally turned back to him, Komaeda gasped, almost screamed out loud.

The light shone down on his face, framing his hair with a shimmering halo. And in his eyes – he just had to look into them more carefully – he could surely see the crystal clear reflection: the beach, the small house, the camera's objective.

Komaeda kept moving forward through the photos, and his mouth was getting wider and wider: he had a growing want inside of him to say something, he _had_ to say something already, but he just didn't know such words. He was looking at himself and he couldn't refute that it was him; there wasn't any mistakes, he could even remember his own thoughts in details when he stood there, and when he turned his head like that... And those thoughts were mostly about how weird, how goofy he must be looking, he just stopped to worry about that at some point.

But on the photos he didn't look uptight. He smiled smoothly and nice, and where his sight was pointed to the photographer – one exact person, – in this smile Komaeda could read every tone of his feelings towards the one he looked at... Even that shot where he laughed wasn't embarassing at all, something pleasant trembled in his chest when he was looking at it.

The person from these photographs with no doubt was enjoying the moment. He was even happy. If Komaeda hadn't known that it was just him on this photos, he would've said with no hesitation that this person was beautiful, with his own mouth.

It was insane.

He took his eyes off the screen to meet with Hajime's ones, though he barely saw him.

"This is..." he exhaled out of breath. "It just can't be me..."

Click. Komaeda stared in front of him. He saw the objective again, and it took eternity for him to realize it.

In his right hand Hinata was holding another camera – much smaller and lighter judging by its appearance, – and with the other one he quicky shook the paper piece.

"There is nobody but you and me here," he responded, taking a view at the printed photo. "So it can be no one but you. And there all the more as well."

He handed the picture to Komaeda. Just few seconds old sight: Nagito looked straight with eyes wide open in deep shock, but even there was a hint of the vague smile, hiding excitement and admiration which Komaeda just couldn't confess, not even to himself, so easily, because they were too associated with him.

"I... I'm speechless."

"I'm happy to know that you don't despise yourself like before," Hajime spoke. "But it would be nice if you would also start to like yourself, too. At least just a little bit of how I like you."

"It would be ignorant to expect less from you, Hajime," Nagito said, still being astounded to the toes. "It doesn't matter who would be the model."

"They say that art exists to express the creator's feelings. Photography is art too, after all."

"Are you trying to say that you feel the same looking at this photos every time you just see me?"

"Well, you're not wrong, I guess," Hajime smiled to him being a bit embarassed.

"Oh," was the only thing Nagito could come up with.

Komaeda had gone the long and difficult way already, but it hadn't been completed yet. To fully understand and accept some particular things he probably needed years.

He lended the camera, which he was still holding, back to Hajime, but he wasn't so hurry to take it back.

"You may take a revenge on me and do a couple of pictures of me, too," he suggested eagerly.

"Take pictures... of you?" Komaeda froze again.

"Yeah, do it!"

A wave of nervousness, running through Komaeda's whole body, was so close to make his hands go numb, so he clutched the camera being afraid to drop it accidentally. How many times had Hajime caught him off guard already today, but that time the obstacle which rose in Nagito's head seemed actually insurmountable. Or he was just too exhausted already to storm it.

Before the begging grimace on his face could become really pitiful, Hinata extended his hands waiting.

"It's okay, don't push yourself if you're not into it."

"They just won't be even the least bit like yours," Komaeda tried to explain.

"It's not about this," Hajime objected calmly. "But I don't insist."

He took the camera and, after getting closer to Komaeda, rose it up with his stretched arms aiming the objective to himself.

"We still have one thing left. Come on, just a single photo and you're free."

"It wasn't that bad actually," Komaeda forced out, feeling quite guilty for giving Hajime reasons to tease him like that, even it was just jokes.

He turned to the camera and placed his hand on Hajime's shoulder. The pulled out a smile specifically for the shot, but it brightened when Hajime's head gently touched his own; the shutter came out then.

"Talking about the cinema – why not rewatching something again," Hinata shrugged. "But if it's not so boring for you that you suggested to film something by ourselves, for real."

"It doesn't mean that I mind," Komaeda specified.

"Then great, but let me leave the bag in the cottage first."

Komaeda was slowly watching Hinata putting cameras back squatting by the bag. After that he stood up, hanging the strap on his shoulder, and headed to the road right away, but Komaeda jumped out in front of him, following the sudden impulse, which also made him, unexpectedly even for himself, to shout out:

"Hajime, I love you."

The break lasted too long, and Nagito started to drown in thoughts how clumsy and out of place it probably came out...

A brazen kiss hit the bridge of his nose.

"Let's go already," Hajime hurried him, but Komaeda heared – in his head – what he actually did tell him when Hinata tightly grabbed his hand.


	4. Chapter 4

The awakening was leaping, rough and too rapid. Komaeda opened his eyes before he could start to proceed with what was happening in real world. The room kept burring in front of him in a heavy myst, dragging him back to abyss. But something was quickly sweeping in it back and forth, dispersing the haze.

Komaeda flinched when hurried clomping hit into his ears. He still didn't consider himself as totally waken up one, but it was too late to lose over heaviness pressuring him back to the bed before he figured out what was up.

Hajime's restless sight ran into him. Komaeda stared at him in response.

"Sorry, I intended to wake you up soon," he said absently. Hesitating for a moment, he got back to his weird fuss, like he was being forced to move by something too powerful to resist.

He was dressed already, even too dressed: all buttoned, with the tie being done. A harsh tide of adrenaline went to Komaeda's head with a flash of blunt pain, but nothing could disturb him more than its mere reason.

"Hajime, what's going on?"

He never put on a suit on the island... unless he had to leave it. It was already enough for Komaeda to ask him, even before he spotted the rest: the wide opened wardrobe, the mess on his desktop. And how Hinata, being seemingly hurried, were running in circles in the cottage to finish his preparations.

"Naegi called. He hardly explained anything, but it seems to be quite urgent. A speedboat's going to be here any minute."

Hajime wasn't hiding his confusion, which spreaded from his words to Nagito as well. Urgent? So it was actually that urgent that they were sending a speedboat and Hajime was standing in front of him fully dressed and ready to jump on it and flee over the horizon, while Komaeda barely started to go aware of anything?

When even a week hadn't passed yet.

"That's..." Komaeda couldn't find any words to describe that situation, which were capable of breaking through the wall of his frustration. "They should've explained at least."

"It must be something major... but I'd prefer it to be just FF's stunt," Hajime sighed. "Forgive me that I can't say goodbye properly neither to you nor to others. I really have to go."

"You won't even have breakfast?"

"I'll take something out from the reastaurant on my way."

Komaeda jumped up, but his momentary clumsy rush had appeared to be enough only to made him crawl to the edge of the bed on his knees. Catching him into his embrace, Hinata lowered down his face. Komaeda expected just a modest farewell kiss instead of how it had gone so long, deep and almost desperate in the end.

"You don't have time for this, do you?" he whispered after having a hard time with pulling away from Hinata's mouth. "It's not fair."

"But now I have a motive to deal with this crap quick and get back here."

Muffled irritation, concern, distraction – but the faint, sad smile, which Hajime forced out for him. Komaeda honestly tried not to show his worry, though that ridiculous, unfortunate suddenness unhinged him to bones, so he sucked at it. But at least he wasn't alone in that.

"Good luck," Nagito said. "But wait, it's not the thing you need to be wished by anyone."

"Still," he snickered, cheering up a little.

When the door shut, Komaeda was still kneeling on the edge of the bed.

He sighed in dissapointment to this silence, trying to collect his thoughts when not a single one among them was pleasing. Nothing else to say, the day started lousy.

Usually Komaeda walked Hajime to the pier. He would've most likely catched up with him, if he had got dressed immediately and jumped out of the cottage... but that was the exact reason why Nagito was slow. He didn't want to let Hinata go yet, and Hinata wasn't as fond in leaving anywhere as the foundation, obviously, had sharply opposite interests. They got separated fast, hectic and so wrong, but it would be better to leave it just like that – otherwise it might hurt even more.

Komaeda got out of the bed to take a shower. Standing under the falling water's pressure, he tried to immerse with his thoughts into the upcoming day, but couldn't give up on wondering why the foundation needed Hajime so urgently all of sudden. He basically lost the track of time and were hurry to turn the faucet off when the skin had already wrinkled on his fingertips.

After wiping up and drying his hair only halfly, Komaeda left for the breakfast.

Few stares being pointed on him right away at the restaurant made Komaeda question himself if he was hungry that much.

"Good morning," Sonia welcomed him.

"Hey, what's up right from the morning?" Souda asked being seemingly anxious. "Hinata has just busted in and left like we wasn't even there."

"He has been summoned by the foundation this morning," Komaeda said. "As I know, he hasn't been informed properly about anything too."

"It's strange," Sonia commented with a concern. "But it can't be helped. Any of us could've been on his place."

_Actually, not really_ , Komaeda thought. _When it comes to talents, it's much more convenient for them to summon Hajime instead of us all. He's like a living multi-tool for them, and probably nothing else._

"We have enough to deal with here too," Koizumi stepped in. The three of them occupied the table before the wall, and Komaeda finally noticed that it was too buried under papers, markers, buttons and god knows what else to the usual restaurant table.

"We would be glad if you join us, but you probably want to have breakfast first," Sonia smiled smoothly.

"I'm already at the restaurant, so don't have to rush," Nagito shrugged. "Are you setting up chores?"

"Yes, do you have any plans for today?" the photographer asked seriously.

"I want to clean up the cottage first. But I can handle something else after that."

Sonia had already found the certain piece of paper in the pile and handed it to Koizumi. Nagito leaned down.

"Togami has written the list of places which require cleanup. From a "total disaster" to a "dust off a bit".

"Hey, why is my room at the first place?!" Souda shouted, glancing at the paper.

"I'm not even surprised," Mahiru commented.

"I mean it, what was he even doing in my cottage? And when?!"

"I don't mind, but I think that I need Souda-kun's permission first if I'm going to clean his cottage," Komaeda noted, seemingly having fun.

"What, no, I... I'll take care of it myself somehow," he brushed it off awkwardly.

"You can discuss your privacy with Togami before you do it, nothing stops you," Koizumi reminded.

"I'll take care of that too, just... forget it already," Souda sighed – overwhelmed completely. Komaeda might bet that he hardly could go find Togami and fight for his rights. It would've been like arguing with a strict mother.

Koizumi left the table to get close to the corkboard hanging on the nearest wall and pin the list. The restaurant stayed being the main place for them to gather and which kept being visited by each of them few times a day, so it was naturally decided to organize some kind of bulletin board there. Mainly it was used for chores lists like that one, sometimes – for important announcements in case someone could miss them. And just on its own and without any negotiations, it used to start blooming with happy birthday wishes and other holidays traces in particular times of year, despite of Togami's complaints that it wasn't settled for public chat's purposes. Komaeda couldn't agree with him. After all, they deserved to have such a nice little thing at least.

Komaeda stood in front of the board and ran his eyes through the list again. The cinema was the next in line after the Souda's cottage, then the library. They both required a lot of work; Komaeda went into thoughts. He didn't want to trick himself by overestimating his abilities, but he couldn't afford idling around while the rest were working hard for everyone's well-being, as well. He had considered a bunch of possibilities and finally took a marker from the table to write his name after the cinema first, and signed the library with it too, but adding the tomorrow's date next to it. So he could deal with it later with no worries, unless someone decided that they could do it sooner. Which most likely wasn't going to happen. But Komaeda had fairly done everything which was up to him.

After having his breakfast at the nearby table, Komaeda splitted up with the classmates and returned to the cottage. The slight mess, being left after Hajime's leaving, met him there; though he had an easy time deciding what to start with.

He fixed hangers in the wardrobe, put papers from the table into neat piles. It took Komaeda years of observing and cautious practice to learn how to take care about Hajime's stuff without going too far. He put aside his own vision of the tidiness to discover and memorize how Hajime was used to organize his place before – due to his mood, or rush, or anything else – he lose it over chaos.

On the floor by the table the big black bag was still lying. Komaeda lifted it a bit by its strap, and a moment later he refreshed his memory how and why it ended up there. It was only yesterday, and, to be honest, the things shouldn't have been changed so much and so fast since then. This bag reminded him about that and was radiating sympathy somehow, as if it was agree with him and shared his deep bitterness for... for the Future Foundation? For that unfair set of circumstances in general? The feel of grudge reminded Nagito about his selfishness he finally was able to afford after all of these years, like some kind of luxury. But if his grudge really was natural and understandable, and the most valid feeling he could experience in a such situation, Komaeda could be at least cheered up by it a little.

Nagito carefully grabbed the bag by his two hands: as expected, it wasn't so light, though it seemed much lighter when Hajime carried it – and sat down on the bed, placing it on his laps. He pulled out the digital camera and turned it on with a smooth, cautious push. Usually Komaeda would've been intimidated even to touch the device he barely knew how to handle, but spontaneous and painfully strong desire clouded a pile of his paranoid thoughts, rolled them up into a small ball and threw it away to the farest corner of his mind.

Though he had already seen these photos, it didn't numb his senses at all. In fact it even did the opposite: knowing in advance what he was going to see, Komaeda wasn't that shocked and stunned anymore, and his soul went into pure trembling. He had seen genious photography pieces before – Koizumi's works, but Koizumi could never do such pictures. Not because she was less of the talent than Hajime; Komaeda wasn't sure what made him think so, but it was probably somehow related to what they discussed yesterday. Hinata's photos weren't made solely from his talent. They weren't about his talent alone, but they were about himself.

It took Komaeda to go to the last photo Hinata made yesterday to finch. Hajime was looking at him: just how he was, like he was still right there for real... as gorgeous as he always was. That much that Komaeda almost went envy to that past himself, who was standing besides him with a wide, happy smile, which he probaby hadn't ever expected to find in his heart before.

He should've brang the bag back to Koizumi. Hajime surely had plans on doing it as soon as he decided what to do with the photos, but he left in hurry, and they didn't know when he was going to be home next time and deal with that. Komaeda could've asked Koizumi to print them or make copies onto a flash drive... but she would've seen them then. Those were just photos, but for some unexplainable reason the thought of them being exposed to anyone else was more frightening and embarassing to Komaeda than one of those possibilities to get caught into a tricky situation with somebody entering the cinema at the wrong time or passing by at the beach... To be honest, something like that could even turn him on a bit. But those pictures touched completely different strings in Komaeda's soul.

It was impolite to keep someone's borrowed stuff for long. But for various reasons why Komaeda couldn't return Koizumi her camera yet, he could try to postpone it at least until the moment she brang it up herself.

Komaeda carefully packed the camera and placed the bag back. It didn't even count as a nostalgic moment with old stuff, which often trapped whoever had to go cleaning, so he no longer had any excuses. Nagito ran his hand over the hair, moving it off his forehead a bit, and put it back with a hairband into a small tail. He stood up and fixed the made up bed after him, to head for the mop after that.

***

The day went productive, though Komaeda, as he was afraid from the start, hadn't enough energy left for the library. He walked to the restaurant with his unbending legs around five at the evening and got back to the cottage after the dinner, even less willing to relocate his heavy body again. Of all of the parts of his body the only one that wasn't aching appeared to be his prosthetic hand.

At home Komaeda collapsed on the bed and was lying unable to move himself at all for the half an hour, or even more, while halfly dreaming and lazily drifting in the stream of his thoughts. Being emptied by exhaustion, he should've been freed of any concerns and worries, but this time for some reason Komaeda couldn't get rid of nasty, dreary feeling that it got even worse than he felt this morning. The closed window made the room almost completely silent. From behind the slightly opened bathroom door he could hear the faucet dripping occasionally.

There was a phone in the desk drawer. A very rare item on Jabberwock: so rare that it was literally the only calling device for the whole archipelago that moment. And Komaeda had to push just one speed dial button to hear Hajime's voice on the other side. It would've been so wonderful if he really could do it.

But in the harsh reality this phone existed for the sole purpose of not ever being used, as Hajime hoped. He was the only person among islanders who stayed in the direct contact with FF, so when he was away, they needed something like this just in case. Chatting by phone like normal people did was out of question for them since they still couldn't be considered so normal. Not in the big world, where they had to constantly and meticulously cover tracks of their existance... or better not to leave them in the first place. One hijacked and overheard conversation could cost them safety.

Though Komaeda thought that this particular precaution was a bit too much, he didn't intend to frame Hajime like that. It didn't matter how hurtfully strong such temptation was, but Nagito could only keep on comforting himself with the delusion that somewhere in the alternative timeline he could allow himself to just give that the screws, get up and do it.

Getting up was yet enough bold fantasy of him. Komaeda could hardly resist slumber dragging him down; that powerless lonely feeling devouring him from the inside was making the idea of burying his face into the pillow and getting absobed by sleep until the next morning even more enticing. But falling asleep at that time meant he was going to start the next day at five or six a.m., when even sun barely started to show at the horizon. In the silence of the cozily sleeping island, without any living soul around there besides birds and insects, Komaeda had not so many chances to perk up.

He wasn't awake enough to concentrate on a book, for sure. And everything outside the cottage felt inaccessibly far. That's how the only thing left appeared to be a TV set, which Komaeda usually disregarded, but it was the only way besides Hajime's stories to know what was up on the mainland. Komaeda literally crawled down from the bed to reach it and press the "on" button.

The room had filled with the irritating noise. Komaeda winced; it was so loud that within next few minutes Hinata might call himself to ask if they were alright there. Nagito picked up the remote and, after waiting a while for jamming to let the normal picture appear, switched few channels one by one. Nothing changed even when he tried out all of them. Komaeda gave up and had decided to turn off the TV before that ugly hiss went into an eternal ringing in his head.

It must've been something wrong with the TV set itself, or with the antenna. Usually Hajime would've figured it out and fixed it. Without him, Komaeda could only go find Souda to ask him for help, but honestly he didn't even needed it that much.

Komaeda returned to the bed and thought that welcoming the sunrise after nine hours of good sleep wasn't that bad idea after all.

***

As a person who visited the library more often than anyone else on the island, Komaeda knew how some of them tended to stay away from this place. Further to this, add there such an unpleasant thing as cleaning, and you'll get the double doze of overwhelming boredom. So there was nothing to be surprised about when nobody corrected Komaeda's note in the chore list and he headed there alone hoping to survive that amount of work he had to deal with.

With how often Komaeda came there for usual matters, it was almost like cleaning his own room for him. A very big one. And very dusty.

So Komaeda was slightly surprised when he saw Pekoyama in the doorway.

She was moving practically noiselessly, so he appeared to be lucky to turn his head in time and notice her before it could've end up being... too sudden.

"Pekoyama-san!" he greeted her. "I've just started cleaning, so I'm afraid that if you're there to spend some time reading, I'll be a bother..."

She shook her head.

"I saw that you was going to handle with the library. But it will be hard by just yourself."

"The day has just started," Komaeda smiled carelessly.

"I thought that I might be of help."

"If you don't have more important business out there..." Nagito started, but cut himself. "Oh, excuse me, that probably have sounded kind of rude... I want to say that you don't have to worry about me, but if it's really not a bother, that would be great."

"That's why I'm here," she answered in an unperturbed tone.

They went further together, without talking much, but Komaeda couldn't object that things went seemingly faster. Pekoyama was doing everything smoothly but confident, staying concentrated and wasn't letting him to distract too. He'd been feeling remarkably comfortable around her.

After finishing it soon, they got supplies back in place. They said goodbye to each other and parted ways. Being done with his chores, Komaeda felt finally affected by library vibes: he got back to the cottage to spend the time left to the dinner with a book.

***

In some fortunate way the restaurant gathered all – except for Hinata being absent – of islanders. It didn't happen that rarely, but usually gave Nagito enough time to forgot how noisy and boiling the hotel became at such moments.

Komaeda shared the table with Souda, Tanaka and Kuzuryuu. He was finishing his stew's portion unhurriedly, when Kazuichi had been called by Sonia. The mechanic leaned to chair's back with his arm and turned to the girl, who appeared next to them. Komaeda was subtly listening to their talk, while watching how the long onion stem from the Souda's plate was dramatically retiring in the teeth of the hamster's pitter-pattering across the table.

It was about how Mioda and Saionji complained about their TVs being broken, and as Komaeda could guess by the word "too" mentioned by Souda, these news just had added some details to the not so new problem. The flash of deja vu shook him from the inside. 

"Now that you mention it," he cut in the discussion, "yesterday I found out that our TV doesn't work as well."

"Same for all of us," Kuzuryuu mentioned dryly.

"Yes..." seemingly irritated Souda catched up. "Though I would be less surprised, if your TV was the only one which still works."

It sounded almost like an accusation, but it made Komaeda funny for some reason.

"I've checked a couple of antennas today already, but it's nothing wrong with them. TV sets are serviceable too," the mechanic explained. "It's so weird, but seems that there is no problems on our end, which means... What the..?!"

Kazuichi turned his head back to the table to take the last look at the quickly accelerated furry back which had eventually dissapeared in Guhdham's scarf. 

"Hey!" Souda shouted. "I know that you can make them behave themselves!"

"You don't like vegetables anyway," Kuzuryuu snickered.

"But it's an invasion of my personal space, again! Does anyone there respect it?!"

"In the world engulfed by infinite confrontation between light and dark forces, momentary weakness can cost a life," Gundham spoke with the staunch voice.

"What..?"

"I think he's trying to say something about survival of the fittest," Komaeda answered the question, though it probably didn't required an answer that much.

"Thanks," Souda sighed gloomy. "Not like I feel better now."

"The life was designed as an ordeal to challenge your spiritual power and resilience!" Gundham pronounced.

Komaeda opened the mouth.

"Don't," the mechanic stopped him. Komaeda shut his mouth back and widened it in a vague smile. Actually he had nothing to smile about at that moment. But nobody was going to shame him for doing something weird.

Komaeda enjoyed the company of his classmates. He enjoyed how he could call them his friends and it would be right for both of the sides. He would feel better only if Hajime was there with them.

Surrounded by the nice, delightful evening Komaeda suddenly incriminated himself in immersing back into the even deeper longing. He said goodbye to everyone and got back to the cottage slightly earlier then he'd been intending to.

Quickly changed conversation's subject pushed that broken TV's curse story Jabberwock's edition out of Komaeda's stream of thoughts. He still wasn't so concerned about TVs themselves, but that mysterious pattern peppered his natural curiosity. At home Komaeda tried to turn on the TV again. The noise hadn't changed since the previous evening at all.

Komaeda decided not to overthink it. Even Souda was confused by that incident, so he had no reasons to count on his own amateurish guesses.

It might be that his intuition just told him not to dig into it... for his own sake.


	5. Chapter 5

Unbearably loud, this music, which were stroking already heavy lump being rolled of barbed wire scratching his ribs, was pulsing in the ears. A little more, and something would definitely rupture in his head with a crimson flash and start flowing to the cold dusty floor. He closed eyes, but another grown vibrated in his throat, coming from the feeling that his skull had got gripped even more because of it. A groan?.. He didn't hear. A little bit more and he could only guess it.

He lost any relation to the world when the sharp, ragged blade sink into his skin while his own head was leading him forward. He lost the rest of his humanity when it pierced his own palm. The cord being clenched in his fist was sliding, like in butter, from every lightest move, and Komaeda could only stop moving, keeping to remind himself that he'd gone too far to ever get a faintest chance to turn back time.

He could just hope that he wouldn't remember how the world outside of death and pain was, before it all ended.

The wave of the hit ran over the floor to his back. And then, when he really wanted to shut his eyes no matter how his racked body and soul would react, he wasn't capable of it. As if he was already dead, and that was how the hell looked, where you were forced to live through the one and only moment, not being able to change anything, for the only sake of living through it again, and again, and again, and again.

The fire was roaring very close, much closer than it actually was. It was just everywhere, it was almost kissing his skin and getting into his body through his wounds, flowing in with his blood. Faster than the flame only the fear was fueling in him. 

For a moment he stopped being himself. For a moment he became himself more he'd ever been. Dry and voiceless sobs curled his stomach with cramping.

Komaeda had waken up not from his scream, but from hearing it finally.

The corner of the blanket he'd been squeezing in his right hand came off his sweaty palm. The ceiling above the head was covered by dark-blue but faint, bleached. The morning wasn't commencing... but it had to arise. At some point.

Nagito turned over onto his side with a long exhale, which was trembling like a tight string, and then he finally heard how these heavy thumps in his ears hadn't been coming from music anymore, but his own heart's pounding.

_I almost forgot how it feels,_ he spoke in his mind audibly and so casual, as if it wasn't anything out of ordinary at all. The imprint of the boundless horror, retreating step by step slowly with a hollow sound; the scream, which still was tingling in this throat – all of that had nothing to do with him. And the drop of sweat that fell off the forehead, when Komaeda shook his head, was supposed to be just a reminder about the window he forgot to open for the night.

He had been plagued by nightmares for many months since waking up from the simulation, but he hadn't got used to them in the end. Not so many people had a chance to find out how it was: to die in your dreams when you had experienced it in reality and know perfectly what it's like. Dreams like that were capable of being so accurate only because they came from memories.

Memories couldn't hurt him and couldn't kill him. That was what Komaeda kept repeating every time in his head, just to not hear his inner voice hysterically claiming the opposite.

It would've been much easier if Hajime had been there, Komaeda thought. There was nothing good in depending on Hajime in everything so much, he reminded himself though. If he really learnt at least a little bit after all of that time, if he really wanted to repay Hajime for his patience, his kindness, for staying by his side no matter what – he had to handle himself too. And not just for Hajime, but for his own sake.

But was it wrong to just want him near?

There wasn't a sign of a fire's crackling in the cottage's stillnes, and the echo of the cry, escaped Komaeda's chest, already dissolved in the night which was few years away from that heat, and knife in his palm, and the spear's cord in the other hand. In the barely visible silhouette of the clock, its hand was shadowing somewhere near the five.

In the cottage next door Togami was sleeping in his bed. In the cottage across the way it was Souda. It must have been that nobody heard him out there.

Komaeda gripped the second pillow and hugged it. The morning would still come, sooner or later.

  


Komaeda was walking behind Kuzuryuu, being discomforted a bit by his rapid pace. Despite of being burdened by the big go-bag on his shoulder, Fuyuhiko was crossing the coast confidently without any checking looks at his companion. Too focused on keeping up with him, Komaeda hadn't managed to start a conversation with him for their whole way.

Komaeda hadn't any plans for that day. After two days of intensive cleaning he had been thinking about taking a break and loosening up. He appeared to be unlucky this time and run into Togami with those aspirations on his mind: the guy had practically seen through him, or sniffed out some special and disturbing scent of an underling dilly-dallying around, so Komaeda had to offer Kuzuryuu his company.

The bag unceremoniously dropped on the sand, and Nagito concluded that they had arrived.

Kuzuryuu squatted over it to put out a couple of iron rods. The grabbed one of them with the palm at the safe distance from the sharp spikes on its end, and the mechanism pulled out the spair, stretching it half of his own height long.

"Settle the net," he ordered.

Talking about their chores, Komaeda was hardly good at anything but cleaning. Long time ago he tried to explain it to Togami and Hinata, but their response was him untangling the fishing net he got out of the bag right now. So he had to care about doing his job maybe not so good, but at least not too bad.

Kuzuryuu, in the meantime, had finished sorting through the equipment and was balancing on his one foot, pulling off the shoe from the other one.

"Kuzuryuu-kun, you probably should've put on something more suitable," Komaeda almost asked him subtly, watching how the other man had rolled up his pants first and sleeves of his shirt then. But at least he left the jacket in the cottage.

"For example? Swimming trunks?" Kuzuryuu responded slightly irritably. "We aren't there to swim, goddamit, it just distracts."

"I was thinking that you had shorts or short-sleeved shirts," Komaeda awkwardly laughed, stepping aside from this argue. "But I'm sure you know better. The clothes are going to soak, that's all I'm trying to say."

"It's just water," Fuyuhiko snickered. "A little salty."

"It's quite salty, to be honest."

"I won't even ask if you're talking from your own experience, or..." the gangster spoke, looking at the ocean. "And you know, you don't seem to be so "suitable" too," he reminded.

Komaeda drew a small halfcircle on the sand with his shoe.

"We would've both felt awkward," he pointed. "And I wasn't planning on getting near to water."

"I see, but how are you going to fish with a net without "getting near to water?" Fuyuhiko grumbled and turned back to Komaeda with a sceptical crease which appeared between his eyebrows.

Kuzuryuu's forward nature wasn't much of help to Komaeda since he started to fight against his destructive and self-deprecating thoughts about being unable to do and say anything right. On the other hand, at the point when they two kind of got along, for the first time Komaeda was so sensibly and almost frighteningly aware of how much things had changed.

Not so far from where they stopped, the big rock was lying, towering over the ground, and waves were crashing into its bottom one after another. Komaeda nodded pointing at it with his head.

"Here is a great observation point."

"If you fall off it, you'll be much wetter than me," Kuzuryuu commented derisively.

"I assume it's the risk I have to take," Nagito started to reason in all seriousness. "It would be difficult to cast the net from right here."

"He have spears, also."

"It would probably end up with all of my tries with it being sucessful," Komaeda smirked a bit nervously. "Hajime asked me not to trigger my luck too much in his absense."

"Um, well..." Kuzuryuu hesitated in confusion, giving off the vibes of how far he was from understanding all of that stuff. "Wait, but what's the difference with the net by this logic?"

"I'm unlikely to be lucky in something I don't know how to do at all," he explained airly. "Actually, I'm pretty much going to be in the water at this rate."

"Okay, you know what..." Fuyuhiko sighed. "Hanamura requested for hibiscus blossoms... I have no idea why this dumbass can't just go and pick them himself, they're literally anywhere on this fucking island."

"Oh, I'll handle this," Komaeda grasped the direction of that talk.

"Great, good luck..." Kuzuryuu broke away. "Shit. Erm... Damn, just go already."

Komaeda let go of the net and headed to the nearest grove obediently.

The nice coolness of the shade welcomed him. Getting used to the local climate in a place like a tropical island wasn't easy, but necessary. Not counting some baking hot days when even without a thinest layer of cloth you wanted to rip off your skin instead of it as well, Komaeda didn't experience a lot of discomfort. But his favourite Jabberwock's attractions were definitely spaces under trees and air conditioners.

Kuzuryuu was right: wild flowers grew out there on every turn. But in that grove Komaeda got lost being surrounded by green.

_If I climbed that rock instead, I would examine how much salt is in the ocean water at this point, no doubts,_ he thought. _It all seems like not so good part of my luck circle yet._

He had to search around a bit more and go deeper before Komaeda had finally found a smal blooming bush. Few bright red buds catched his eye.

He rushed to it a bit too fast – he realized that in the next second. Komaeda tripped and almost ran into the ground. The hollow ache of his foot being hit by something solid made him look down.

It was a rock, nothing more, nothing less. There was nothing else he could get tripped by. But for some reason Komaeda had been staring at it much longer and intrigued than any rock deserved it... except, probably, for that one. Nagito leaned over to pick it up.

The rough dark-grey stone, fitting his palm perfectly, was slightly warm, even though the place it had been lying wasn't reached by sunlight much, and was reflecting with peculiar, almost metallic shine. Komaeda weighed it in his hand and after making sure that he actually had nothing to do with such the rock, placed it back.

There were also few more lying nearby, which had familiar looks and texture, but much smaller, like fragments. Komaeda took the tiniest of them, excluding the sand. It was glittering between his fingers, capturing thin rays of sun, which found the way through leaves above.

Putting it his pocket, Nagito reached for the flowers.

When he got back to the beach, he found Kuzuryuu getting out of the water. As expected, the bottom of his trouser legs got heavy because of the moisture. Having noticed Komaeda, he nodded to him pointing at soaking net lying on the sand, which was already buried under the pile of small fishes.

"There."

Dropping the flowers near, Komaeda heard the long exhale and the thud of the iron spear falling to the ground. Giving a look back to Kuzuryuu over his shoulder, he saw audible, almost physically sensable thoughts about something on his face. While Komaeda were determining if he really should try to ask Fuyuhiko about whatever had affected his mood so noticeably.

"Would mind if I start talking about something really out of place?"

"If you have troubles, I barely can help... but I can hear you out."

Without further ado, Kuzuryuu spitted that out.

"Sometimes I'm really sick of FF."

Komaeda blinked wordless. By just a single phrase Kuzuryuu digged out all of his inner thoughts and feelings, which Nagito had been trying to shove up deep into himself to not deal with them. Otherwise his want of wrapping up in the blanket and pouting at life started getting too strong. Komaeda still hadn't forgiven it for Hinata's abrupt leaving (and there hadn't been anything heard from him yet).

"I understand that we're all, like, bad guys," he continued. "But this is hypocrisy. We're a burden and an old stain to them, but every time they need help – yeah, it's so great to have us there. Just like that time when we decided to cover their asses and take the blame for something we actually had nothing to do with."

"But we discussed that alltogether," Komaeda reminded. "And it was our choice."

"I know, right?" Kuzuryuu sighed. "I didn't mind, and even now I'm not saying that it was for nothing. Just... you know, everything could've been so different if we just had let the world know the truth about us and what happened. Of course, it's not so easy to wash off all the blood, but it could've been our chance to try at least."

He raised hands.

"But now we're just here. Everyone calls this place home, our shelter, but it's our cage as well. If some shit happens there, we'll have to deal with it on our own."

"We can stand up for ourselves, can't we?"

"We can truly count just on each other," Kuzuryuu gave him a long sigh. "I knew this feeling before, it's when... you don't have so many people to trust around you. And should always be on guard. But I didn't owe anything to shitheads who could shoot me any moment. And now I stink like some freaking dog."

"I can tell you that you don't look like a dog at all," Komaeda giggled nervously.

"It sucks to whine when you can't change what've already been done anyway," ignoring his comment, Kuzuryuu kept speaking. "But I just wonder, will we ever stop doing that: reminding to each other all the time that things are not so bad, but actually, if you look at it from a bit different angle... it's crappy."

"Probably never," Komaeda shrugged without giving it much thought. 

Of course, they were all different. Of course, their lifes before the tragedy were totally as different as they were built from their past, their talents, their dreams. Kuzuryuu had reasons to feel bitter about every day he spent on Jabberwock. They couldn't see the ocean in front of them with another's eyes.

"We did many horrible things," Komaeda catched the pause to start talking. "Everything would've been totally different if we hadn't met her, hadn't fell under her influence, if she hadn't ever been born at all. We must live without burying ourselves into these ideas of what we could've done or shouldn't have done... But if I really had a chance to enter Hope's Peak Academy once again and live through every day I spent there, I would care about repeating it in details just like how it was."

He heard a short and loud exhale from Kuzuryuu's side.

"Why?" he asked wary.

"Because only thanks to all of that I'm standing here right now," Nagito concluded.

Kuzuryuu hesitated. Once again just the trace of discursive, controversial thoughts on his face, and once again Komaeda couldn't tell what exactly the gangster was thinking about.

"I don't know what I was expecting to hear from you," he responded slightly frustrated. "You do have a point, but I have that feeling that I've got nothing of what you actually meant."

Komaeda laughed quietly.

"Seems it can't be helped."

"Though in the end you're not the creepiest guy I've ever met in my life."

"Hmm... thank you?" Komaeda mumbled with a hint of irony.

"...bur, for sure, one of them."

Komaeda wanted to give a carefree comment about how he could accept it as a compliment, considering what kind of people – most of who surely were something – Kuzuryuu was surrounded by due to his special lifestyle. But a sudden strike of tense running through the guy's whole body made Komaeda go silent even in his thoughts.

"Do you hear it?" Fuyuhiko asked seriously.

Komaeda was all ears. Focusing on sounds surrounding him, he heard ocean noises being remarkably loud, as well as birds' cries, and his own breath. He had to hear once again everything he learned not to hear, before he could finally notice something out of place: an unnatural roar coming from afar and steadily growing.

Sooner than he managed to form an assumption in his mind, the violent wind flow catched his hair and the coat's lamp; Komaeda nearly jumped and looked up to spot a helicopter crossing the sky above the island.

When he exchanged looks with Kuzuryuu next time, he recognized, like in the mirror, his own anxiety arising inside.

"A helicopter is... quiet urgent," he voiced his thought not so coherent, but Komaeda wasn't capable to do it even like that.

There was only one place on the Jabberwock Island where a helicopter could land with no problem. Having abandoded all of their stuff on the beach, Komaeda and Kuzuryuu rushed there.

They arrived to the airport just in time to run into Hinata at the departure gates.

"Hajime!" Komaeda shouted and his voice sounded just awful: the happiness because of their meeting stuck in his throat, being crashed into the lump of worry and confusion, and tightened when Hajime's sight – anxious and restless – pinned to him still and had been observing Komaeda as if he couldn't even recognize him first.

"Nagito," he exhaled then and grabbed him with his arms right away. Being completely lost, Komaeda placed his hands on the guy's back hesitantly. Something was wrong with that embrace and with Hajime himself, and something... void. Komaeda was standing upstraight, feeling the warmth and the weight of his body – but that was all.

"Hajime, what happened?" he asked almost whispering. They were just moments away from Kuzuryuu appearing near them and making whatever actually happened their shared problem. But yet, more than by any presumption, Komaeda was scared by Hinata in front of him. And when their eyes met in that short glimpse and Nagito saw dark circles under them and Hajime's exhausted face, he went numb.

"Is everything alright out here?" he threw into the air with loud, stressful voice.

"Have been alright so far," Kuzuryuu answered, giving Hajime an intense stare. Not so many people could withstand the demanding, almost aggresive energy he was exuding – but Hinata could; he petrified, straightened up and forcefully headed to the exit. If just seconds ago he hadn't let Komaeda see himself terribly shattered and gutted, the second one would've probably believed this facade. And the way how Hinata was desperately pulling it on again made Nagito unable to turn away as hurtfully as he couldn't turn away from the flame burning inside the warehouse.

Catching up with Hajime outside, Komaeda clumsily grasped the sleeve of his jacket. That was when Hinata finally slowed down a bit, letting Nagito smooth out his steps.

"Hajime, you're really frightening right now," Komaeda said straight. "What's happening?"

"I have to gather everyone first, then I'll explain everything," he cutted.

"Can you please at least start explaining?"

Hinata sighed loudly, and his true state came through that surely amazing "always knows what to do" Hinata, but at that exact moment Komaeda painfully wanted to talk to the other one, to that... more real Hajime?

"You're not aware of what's going on at the mainland, right? TVs must be out of order."

"How do you know about TVs?" Komaeda tensed up.

"I don't know how to call it," Hinata ignored the question, continuing to answer the previous one. "Things are just... bad."

Lively gulls, having waved in the distance, sounded just the way they used to, and that made Komaeda uneasy even more.

***

Getting everybody at the restaurant surprisingly took not so long. Komaeda was sitting groggily on the chair, kind of off, without even feeling it underneath him, like he was slowly getting into feeling the outside world less and less, while Hajime was telling him and the others what was happening with the rest of the world, somehow bypassing the island.

It sounded like a recap of some sci-fi movie – and actually pretty bad movie. A meteor shower slamming into the planet (which in fact damaged satellites) and not ending so far: Komaeda hadn't problems with building the scene in his mind, but he couldn't apply it to that reality he existed in. The emotions he was reading through his classmates' confusion were just the same.

His insides were suffering from controversies. It was difficult to imagine and accept something you couldn't even see with your own eyes, and yet Komaeda had been preferring to think about the rest of the world as if he hadn't to be its part anymore. He cheered for it success and could feel sorry for its misfortunes; he treated the world away from the island as his old friend, who is still close to your heart in some sense, but you can't help or truly care for him anymore. And in the long run, you have nothing to do with him and his problems now, they just don't affect you. 

However, Hinata was giving every appearance to made it clear that he witnessed something... which could actually affect them pretty much.

"Um. Well. It's not a prank after all," Souda got anxious. "And it sounds bad as hell. How is FF going to deal with it?"

"A lot has happened these days," Hajime responded with patience, but not really willingly. "I wish I could tell you, but don't have enough time left."

"Are we already in a hurry? He have to rush for building a shelter, or what?"

"Souda, stop this," Koizumi scolded him. Sharper than she had to, but blaming her was pointless. They all had equal chances to accidentally release the negativity from the inside. Komaeda were crumpling the lap of his coat nervously for a few minutes already.

Hajime was standing leaning on the table. Komaeda had already subtly invited him to sit for several times, but he had shooked off it all, and Nagito couldn't stop clinging with his eyes to how Hinata's legs were impatiently twitching when the upper body froze still and steady. The "always knows what to do" Hinata was awfully convincing, but Komaeda knew those habits and features of him which betrayed Hajime when he was nervous.

"I had a hard time getting away from there just to tell you everything and make sure that you all are fine," he frowned. "But now I have to go back to the mainland."

Komaeda heard few indignant shouts, but not a single of them had turned into the clear objection. He stayed silent only because his want to protest was so strong that he seemed to be unable to speak out anything coherent.

He saw how Tanaka left the restaurant without saying goodbye to anyone, and how Hanamura dissapeared into the kitchen muttering to himself. The rest were still discussing shocking news, but Hinata pulled away from them and that conversation. He seemed to be slowly heading to the exit, so Komaeda rushed to follow him.

"Nagito," he grabbed him on his way as if he was the first to spot and approach Komaeda, rather than the reverse. "Listen to me, that phone in the drawer... keep it to yourself. I'll call every evening. If you don't answer for once – I'll take it as a distress call and be right back. Okay?"

Komaeda nodded absentmindedly. Then repeated it one more time in his head and finally reflected on what he'd heard. Nodded again, more confident.

They got back to the cottage together, but in the dead silence. They both had more pressing issues to worry about for Komaeda to regret about how gloomy and poor their reunion was today, but to his shame he actually felt upset about it. Hinata almost flew into the house and started thrashing around restlessly, and the more Komaeda was watching him, the less he could understand what _he_ was supposed to do.

"Hajime, you need to take a break," he mentioned gently. "You looks like you haven't even taken a seat these days."

"I'll take a seat on my trip back," he grunted, opening the wardrobe.

"The sun is going down already. At least spend one peaceful night here."

Hajime froze, clenching the sleeve of his own shirt being pulled out of the closet. He stared blank into space, slowly building something in his mind.

"Yeah, sure," he mumbled with the confidence which was just few seconds old.

Komaeda sighed quietly: whether relieved, whether worried that only his interruption saved Hajime from his rash compulsion.

That was like he'd run out of batteries. He floated away from the wardrobe with a slow move of a sleepwalker and circled a bit more, like he was trying to find or remember something. Nagito watched in silence.

It got dark. They never had a proper conversation before returning to the restaurant for the dinner. It was much quieter than usual there, too. Sullen, uneasy ambience thickened the air: on classmates' faces Komaeda saw more or less similar unpleasant thoughts. First time in a while they had no reasons to stay there for long.

Komaeda couldn't let him go like that. Barely touch the ground with his feet, pass by like a lightning, and dissappear again without leaving anything but the trace of angst smothering the island and Nagito himself... and take away everything he had on his heart with him. It didn't have to be this way. The second when Komaeda saw the helicopter in the sky, everything started to fall apart, but what was the worst: it actually happened even earlier, when he sat on the bed and watched Hajime leaving, and he couldn't know, he had no idea that the ugly, paralyzing helplessness was already inside him.

That Hajime was just... so serious. And he had never shut himself down like this before. Even when their relationship reminded walking on a thin ledge at the twenty floors height together, their dialogs were far longer and richer, and used to start much easier. Komaeda coulnd't get rid of the feeling that whatever he say or ask would be stupid and irrelevant. And for the first time it was stopping him.

Nagito was lying on his side of the bed, still running in the circle of his inner conflict, when Hajime came out of the bathroom. Barefoot, in his underwear and tank top; and Komaeda finally remembered that he was home himself.

Hinata turned off the light, and Komaeda got blind for a minute, while sheets were rustling near him in the darkness. When eyes got used to it, the first what they saw was the pair of smoothly and rarely uplifting eyelids, and pupils behind them eventually focused on him.

Komaeda waited. He was sure that Hajime would say something, but he never heard anything. But maybe it wasn't necessary for him to open the mouth to say something. Nagito raised the hand a bit and passed his fingertips across Hajime's face. He barely moved, but the warmth of his cheek reached the palm.

Komaeda gently ran the hand through his hair – wet after the shower yet, – coming closer. He slipped his another hand under Hinata's neck with caution. They touched with foreheads softly. The heart was beating whether too slow or too fast, and for some reason Komaeda was afraid of moving any more, until the moment when the other's guy hands connected firmly on his back. Resting his elbows on Hinata's shoulders, Komaeda buried the face in the fuzzy forelock. He wanted to wish Hajime good night, but didn't memorize whether he did that or not.

Nagito woke up next morning early, in the middle of the empty bed.


	6. Chapter 6

He had the phone in his pocket for the whole day. When he would return to the cottage every evening after dinner, Komaeda would put it on the table – if he planned to stay on the couch – or on the bed near him. He would move it a little farther once Hajime would hang up, but until the next morning only.

On two occasions he woke up at the middle of the night for unknown reasons and layed for a while, listening to the silence which kept sounding like an echo of a phone's vibration to him. Komaeda knew that the real call would make him jump out of bed, like an explosion. But couldn't sleep anyway.

Usually Hinata would call around eight or nine at the evening. Once Komaeda stayed awake until the midnight, fighting against somnolence he felt after such insomnia episode, before the display finally woke up. Hajime on the other end sounded tired and kind of unfocused, but in general – just like he had sounded all past days. Just in the midst of their conversation, after one more Komaeda's yawn, Hinata probably took a look at the clock, because he immediately fell into endless apologies for being such a dumbass. Amuzing, but that particular one was the night when Komaeda had peacefull, almost sweet dreams. He insisted that Hajime had nothing to apologize for. Too sleepy to think about it much, Komaeda just blurted that he loves him. "I love you too," Hajime answered right away, quite sadly, but with sensible and genuine warmth; maybe he hadn't time and energy to think about it much either.

Hinata would barely tell him what was going on the mainland. Firstly Komaeda enquired, but to general questions Hajime responded with too general and vague answers and as soon as Nagito would try to get some details from him, he would be hurry to change the subject or remind that he couldn't talk for long. Komaeda gave up on asking.

At first Hajime would call mostly – hiding it just too bad – to confirm that everything was fine on the island. But time and distance played their roles. Calls could now last ten, even fifty minutes before Hinata would suddenly realize it and – usually hastily – say goodbye. He couldn't trick Komaeda and made him not to point out that over the time Hajime showed more and more enthusiasm to chat, and he himself would generally establish a topic or tell Komaeda stories about anything but the things which actually defined their life right now: about a ridiculous fight at the lunch, about the broken shower; about how they almost ran the tom cat over the car and now he paraded around the foundation's headquarters as if it belonged to him even before it was built there. Komaeda, in turn, would recount him everything which happened on the island, though ironically at the current moment the life on Jabberwock was even less eventful than usual. One of those evenings Hinata made him retell the book Komaeda started reading recently.

The only thing which made difficult for Komaeda to genuinely enjoy their talks was the itching and too reasonable guess that behind that enthusiasm Hinata hid how less and less he could bear the reality he had to face. 

More than two weeks passed like that.

The environment of the island stayed quite tranquil... but not too enjoyable. Hajime suddenly returning with bad news unnerved the whole Jabberwock and left them alarmed, but people normally just can't be constantly deeply worried about something that haven't happened yet, is not already happening and nobody knows for sure if it's even going to happen soon. Little by little everything got back to the way it used to be, though sometimes Komaeda would sense thin, viscous fibers of tension in the air, or catch someone's too brooding sight staring into the distance. And he himself, carrying the phone, which was pulling down his coat with its weight, in his pocket was the main custodian of the dark and unsighty side of their present.

Returning to the cottage every evening, Komaeda would turn on the TV. No signal, for days and days.

That evening he made it the late one with a book, letting himself disconnect from the world for a little while; a call would sweep him back onto his feet no matter how absorbed Nagito was. He didn't pay attention to time passing and melted into til the very moment when he finally pulled his heavy and puffed up eyes off the text to look up the clock, which kicked him more than the phone's buzzing could do it. Ten o'clock – it was already later than Hinata usually used to call. Komaeda was always uncomfortable with things going like that: when nothing happened technically, but that itself turned out to be enough to run the countdown to the moment when the anxiety would fill him up entirely. He was waiting – and afraid that he was going to stay that way forever. He could press just one button for the speed dial call, and that thought was designed to comfort Nagito, but to be honest it made that even worse. He got lost if he had do it for real or not. He couldn't shake worst case scenarios off his head, where he was going to end up being too insistent and disturb Hinata at some kind of so wrong, fatal moment... or he was just too scared to face other, even more realistic fears of him.

Komaeda put the book aside and pulled the phone, lying on sheets, closer. As if it could change anything. He was aware that his growing impatience alone wasn't going to be enough, but rolled the phone in his hand, with eyes wandering across the room. Then he closed them for a little bit – another desperate, ridiculous and inefficient trick to make the universe refresh and keep going the right way once he opened his eyes for the next time, but it was just about... how lucky he'd turn out to be.

  


The first thing Komaeda saw later was his own arm stretched across the sheet.

"Hmm?" he mumbled quietly, and something cold ran down the back of his neck when Nagito heard his own voice, just so low, slurred, sleepy...

Sleepy?

Komaeda flinched, as if he got electrocuted, and his laps flew up to his stomach, creasing the blanket under them. He found himself curling up on his side with the phone being squeezed in the hand. The head felt awfully heavy, and hairs got in his stair. Komaeda brushed them away furiously once he glanced at the clock again, but that only made him see clearer what he was refusing to believe. Somehow the clock hand appeared near six.

Hardly handling his own yet stiffened body, Nagito sat up.

His school years couldn't be nearly compared with how he hated himself at that moment. The beating in his chest was getting close to the dangerous rate of a heart attack, when Komaeda unclenched his fist and took a look at the display.

The air stuck and disappeared in his lungs. For few too long seconds Komaeda was staring at the phone, which showed him, no doubts, six in the morning as well... and nothing more than that.

Just in case he checked and considered the date too. There were no contradictions and nothing weird except for... except for everything else. Komaeda got overcome by anxiety when he imagined how many of missed calls he might see in notifications... or just one of them, which could have even more pressing and ominous energy. And when he saw nothing, he didn't know how he was supposed to react. On the other hand, he could improvise so.

After bringing the phone close to his ear, Komaeda heard four or five dial tones before muffled noises reached him from the other side and then – not straight away – also the quiet, a bit hoarse "Hello?".

The way Hajime sounded was... not very friendly. Nagito hesitated for a second: he wasn't expecting that he would need to explain why he called, but it was what the long pressing silence pushed him to do. He started choosing his words carefully.

"Hajime, I'm sorry, I was waiting for your call at the evening like always, but fell asleep, and just've waken up, there is no any missing calls in the record, but if you called..."

"Oh, it's you, Nagito..." a small hint of being perked up softened Hinata's voice, he was still sounding like every word being said or even appeared in his mind costed him unbearably much of his remaining energy. "Sorry," he mumbled, sensibly intending to explain himself, but in the end it all stayed unspoken in that indistinct, thoughtful pause. "Sorry for making you worry," he gave up and concluded.

"You sound exhausted," Komaeda pointed. A deep sigh and the silence again. It seemed that Hajime wasn't feeling like arguing, but that was how their conversation had reached the deadblock at that point already.

Komaeda didn't considered that his call at six a.m. could wake Hinata up; and he prefered not to think whether it was worse or better if he had no need to be waken up in the first place.

"By the way, I'm going back tonight," he spoke. To Komaeda, who was too worried about Hajime's state, it took a bit more time than usual to reach him.

"Tonight? It's great," he exclaimed.

"Yeah, so... you can just get back to sleeping now."

The call had ended. Komaeda had no idea what more he was expecting to hear from Hajime, but the rush of him finishing it left the slick feeling of the incompleteness in him.

The morning which poped out of nowhere reminded Nagito about itself. The book he put on the other side of the bed was still there, and sheets got messed completely. He had some more hours in store to wash off his own mess being left by that screwed up night. Komaeda moved the phone away.

Despite of inner tensions tearing him apart, Nagito fell asleep indecently quick.

***

After the lunch the most of 77-th class scattered into the bay near the dock. They could only guess what Hinata meant by the "tonight" he mentioned in the call in terms of the exact time. And all of them, including Komaeda, were looking forward either for Hajime's comeback and news he had.

Komaeda, Souda and Kuzuryuu were hanging around closest to the pier. Nagito brought a book with him, putting up the thin curtain between himself and the rest of the world, but distracted from time to time, confirming the other's presence and echoing the eyesight of the gangster, who was looking at the distance with a gloomy pensiveness. Souda kept squinting at the sky, wary and with just short nervous looks, like he was careful not to draw attention of whatever waiting for a moment to crash down right to his head. He kept chanting something to his nose, trying to start a conversation, but every time Fuyuhiko cut him being irritated.

It turned out to be a long wait, and the spirit out there was far from pleasant, but nobody of them thought of leaving.

Pekoyama appeared from the beach side. She quickly informed them that she hadn't seen anything unusual or suspicious; Kuzuryuu noded. Nothing "unusual or suspicious" hadn't happened on the island since Hinata left last time. In fact, it didn't seemed like anything but his upcoming return was going to disturb their peaceful, measured life there soon; it was only Hinata who could remind them that something was not okay. His presence had never meant to be a bad sign, Komaeda thought sadly. 

He had been really being immersed by the book first, but the concentracion kept leaving him with sun moving across the sky. In the end, it was difficult to tell was it really the luck or Komaeda was already watching at the ocean long enough to see a speedboat cleaving waves on its way toward the coast.

A couple of uneasy heart thumps came from the thrill growing in him. He heard that Hinata's voice from his memories once again: husky and reflecting nothing but an infinite tiredness.

Komaeda was the first to run the pier when motor's noises reached their ears. He heared footsteps approaching him from behind, but the distance which had drastically grown between them and Komaeda's cold determination kept them afar. He felt unexplainable need to be the first who would see Hajime, not to let anyone steal that moment from him: he needed to know whether Hinata he spoke that morning was that Hinata who was getting back to them, and if he was – Komaeda had to protect him. Without even knowing why and from what he was going to protect him.

There was no one else but him on the boat. Hajime got out to the land; Nagito walked to him.

He looked calm, collected, but huge shades lying under his eyes were quite spectacular, not in a good way. _It were just two weeks_ , Komaeda wanted to cry, _not two years, Hajime, if you haven't noticed, so don't be like that._ That was how his rising desperation turned into words which he would never say outloud. 

They couldn't stay alone together under pressuring sights of the crowd, which flooded the dock soon, limitless like that. Souda's voice broke the silence first.

"Hey, Hinata!.. oh man, sorry, but you look awful," he stopped short without even trying to hide his dissapointment about Hajime didn't really looking like a person who got back with any good news.

"I guess," Hajime responded coldly.

"Not as awful as your looks," Saionji stepped in with annoyance, shooting the mechanic just with her bare eyes. "If you have something to tell us," she turned to Hinata, "better to do it right away."

"Actually, I have neither good nor bad news. Things haven't changed that much," Hajime responded. "Just tell me that everything's fine out there."

"We have nothing new to tell either," Komaeda confirmed.

"That's good," Hinata sighed in relief openly.

"Wait a minute," they heared vocal, almost hysterically awkward voice of Hanamura, "but it means, that everything's still bad?"

"Hinata-san says that he doesn't have anything urgent to inform us, so it's better to let him rest," Sonia noted smoothly.

"But does FF have any plan?!"

"We really can discuss it later," Pekoyama said.

"We'll have the whole evening left after the dinner," Hiyoko added, "of course, if you stop showing off and we have this dinner."

Saionji's fierce voice made Teruteru jump up and scurry away from the beach without any words.

Fortunately, no one else appeared to argue with Sonia's sensible idea. Everyone wandered off to mind their own business, and Hinata headed to the cottage with Komaeda.

Nagito was watching how he pulled out his laptop straight away, turned it on and had been looking into some documents in silence until Komaeda talked first.

"It probably would be better for you to have a rest until the dinner," he suggested.

"I have some business," Hinata answered quick, without breaking from his work. "I'll rest later. I won't mind you going to dinner without me."

"You are not going to eat?" Nagito got surprised.

"I'll eat later."

Later – this word was somehow calming and alarming at the same time.

But Komaeda decided to trust Hajime. He wanted to trust him. Around an hour later he left him in the cottage alone and went to the restaurant. 

He noticed that everyone had chilled out a bit. Hajime was there now and he hadn't gather them to build an air raid shelter urgently, so there was nothing to worry about – that was how it looked for them, he assumed. Hanamura was joking and smiling as if nothing had happened.

"I was expecting to see Hinata," Souda spoke. "But if he's sick of us after such welcome, I can understand him."

"Just leave him alone, the guy wasn't off to rescue stray cats there for two weeks," Kuzuryuu snapped back.

"I'm trying to say," Souda ignored him totally, "that if he really has something we should know, he'll tell it, right? Did he say anything about how long he's going to be here?"

"He didn't say anything."

Komaeda refrained from specifying how literal he meant it.

"So everything should be really okay, I guess. Hey, what about arcades?"

Komaeda couldn't resist sharing the mood. After the dinner many of his former classmates relocated to the first floor of the hotel. Nagito didn't mind joining them, but – out of habit – chose a game which his luck would barely interfere: he and Sonia occupied the table with a chess board.

Nagito didn't care much about time. He relaxed in the company of his friends with the thought that Hajime should've already finished the work and been resting too, probably sleeping. So Komaeda just took it slow and planned to return to the cottage a bit later just in case he was right about that, bringing some food for him.

Evening shadows fell behind the window. When Komaeda went outside, they were already lightened up by the pool's radiant blue shining. The faint smell of chlorine mixed with a freshness of unusual chilly evening.

Carefully, trying not to cause too much noise, he opened the door of the cottage. The light were on inside: just as bright, as cozy and warmly lush as the one Komaeda had just left in the hotel. Nagito slowly – making sure not to drop the tray lying on his another hand – squeezed through to get inside.

Hajime was sitting at the table in, it seemed, exactly the same position in which Komaeda saw him last time. Nagito forgot to close the door behind him and stayed on the doorstep in confusion, as if he had come even at less appropriate time than if he just had seen Hinata resting and enjoying the silence. The door, which he wasn't holding anymore, creaked ugly.

"Are you still working?" Komaeda asked lowering his voice.

Hinata flinched a little.

"Uh-huh," he answered shortly.

No matter how much time Komaeda would spend staying awkwardly where he was, it most likely woudn't make things any better.

Komaeda placed the tray on the side of the table which wasn't buried under papers and other stuff.

"I thought that bringing you dinner there wouldn't be a bad idea."

It wasn't actually normal and good feeling, if you think about it, but Komaeda was pleasantly surprised that Hajime turned his head to take a look at the plate.

"Oh," his serious expression of the concentration on surely not so pleasant and joyful work seemingly softened. "Thanks."

Nagito got cheered up for a moment either, but Hinata got back to the business immediately. For the rest of the evening he never remembered about the plate right next to him.

Komaeda knew that he had to interfere... again. But the invisible wall rose up around Hajime and left him all confused how he was supposed to approach it.

It was around eleven o'clock when Nagito gave up and decided to shift that problem to tomorrow's him.

"When are you going to get your bedtime?" he asked Hajime.

"You can turn off the main lights, I'll use the desk lamp," he tossed instead of answering.

To trust somebody you often have to be capable of waiting and sacrificing some amount of your patience. Nagito switched off the lights and got underneath the blanket with his back to Hajime's table. He had enough of trust and patience to do that.

At the morning Komaeda woke up realising that he left them all in the previous evening.

The rays of sun filled the room, proclaiming the morning, and Hajime's hand were forcefully covering from them his face which lied on the table amidst chaotic piles of papers. His jacket hanged on the back of the chair, but the shirt was still on Hinata the same way it was yesterday.

Komaeda went closer to him and lightly touched his shoulder. Hajime flinched with his whole body, as if he heard cannon fire at the least, pulled his head off the the table and nervously glanced around him. His chest was moving fitfully fast but heavy, and eyes were barely visible under the eyelids; he could pass out every second.

"Hajime, the bed is right there, not far at all," Nagito commented dryly.

"...what time is it?" Hinata forced out, being choked up.

But he just made a quick look at the clock himself – it was around ten in the morning – and run the palm through his face. At this point Komaeda couldn't even ask him if he was fine: obviously, he wasn't.

"You can't carry on like this."

"Nobody asked me whether I can or not," Hinata responded, and Komaeda got displeased by how unbelievably stubborn despite of his state he still was.

"You don't have to prove them anything," he blurted it out with no strength left to stand it anymore. He wanted, he really wanted to sound... convincing, strongly, just a little bit of that Hajime who talked sense into him when Komaeda himself lost his way. But he rather spilled out the provocation, prickly and too much of a reproach.

"It's not about that at all," Hinata spoke calm, and Komaeda felt himself just completely stupid: his provocations even didn't work properly anymore. 

"Then what?" he asked lowering his voice.

Nagito was patiently waiting for an answer. Or for no proper answer. Hinata hesitated, but stood up and moved to the bed's edge. Komaeda saw that as an invitation.

"I lied when I said that there's nothing new," Hajime started. "There are some news and they're quite worrysome."

Nagito decided to put off his reaction until the end of the story. He noded subtly, letting Hajime continue.

"That all started with meteorites, but they're not the sole problem anymore. Seems that they have also brough some kind of an unknown virus to the atmosphere."

"Virus..?" Komaeda blinked so hard that his own eyelids made the sound of a door shuttting in his ears.

"Roughly speaking, yeah, it's a virus," Hajime muttered with unhidden irritation. "The members of the operational team which worked with first meteorites at their fall's place appeared to have same sympthoms. It seems that it can't be transmitted human-to-human in any known ways, but new cases keeps appearing, and they're always related to locations of these damn rocks. At this rate it can spread very fast, and we'll have a dangerous pandemic nobody knows how to deal with. I've been researching this virus for almost two weeks already, and I'm not so sucсessful in it yet."

Komaeda still had difficulties imagining that somewhere out of here – somehow overlooking the Jabberwock Island so far – the world was suffering from such an eccentric disaster as meteor storm... and now it was also a virus? It could be just a part of some second-rate science fiction product, not the real life, though years ago Komaeda and his fellows had an experience like that, with the detective genre. But everything should have a limit. Or was there really some point of no return where the madness gripping the world would never leave it alone anymore?

"I had a hard time urging them to let me go back here," Hinata sighed. "I can't take it like that anymore, to wake up in the morning being freaked out by a thought that a night after my call would be enough for Jabberwock to get wiped out and that it probably has already happened. Though it actually seems to be the world's safest place for now, I have now idea why, it's just a nonsense, but you don't know how relieved I am by that."

"When was you planning to tell everyone?"

"Never," he answered straight. "Once the problem's solved. Well, or worsens, of course.

"And you'll leave it like this?"

Hinata shooked his head impatiently.

"I'm telling this right now, because I trust you. It's not like I don't trust the others. But it won't change anything, don't you see? They are just going to be even more worried than they already are. It's good that everything's fine there, but when you can't see the threat with your own eyes... it makes the fear more powerful," Hajime looked straight to Komaeda seriously. "Did you see Hanamura yesterday? I don't want panic spreading here. I don't have time and energy to protect them from themselves, on top of that."

 _And yet you're the only one here who needs it,_ the sad thought passed by Komaeda's mind.

"I have to get back to work," he finished.

"You need to get a proper sleep," Nagito objected calmly but firmly. "How many days have you already spent in such pace?.. But no, wait, don't tell me, I have a feeling that it'll surely make me mad at you."

"I wouldn't answer even if I wanted," Hajime grinned with no fun. "I don't remember."

Komaeda sighed audibly, but he was actually slightly relieved somehow. He finally could be sure that Hajime is near and that he can reach him. 

The moment before he was ready to do it literally, Hajime himself placed his palm on his hand lying on the bed.

"If I go to bed right now, I'll collapse until the dinner, pull an all-nighter once more, and it's gonna be a mess again," he spoke. "I'm not sure that I'm able to relax right now, but, uhm, guess I'll just try to take a break until the evening."

"It's wise," Nagito encouraged him.

Hajime rose of the bed fast.

"I'll get a shower."

"May I join?"

Hajime hesitated oddly, but then responded with a faint smile.

"Sure."

Following him to the bathroom, Komaeda accidentally catched the sight of the table with his eyes. The plate on the tray he left yesterday was empy after all.


	7. Chapter 7

Hinata kept his promise. He hadn't managed to brush off his drowsiness fully, and in such state he barely could pressure himself to do anything to entertain himself, so they were just sitting by the pool and chitchatting idly. The day turned out to be bright and slightly humid; the coolness coming from the water felt mint once reached a head. Komaeda stepped out for a little while and got back with two misted glasses of limonade.

"Oh, I could've gone to bring them with you," Hajime exlaimed surprised.

"There is no need," Nagito assured him tranquilly. "I have only one hand which can be cold, either way."

"But thanks, I mean," Hajime smiled croockedly in response to his comment. Komaeda had to quit his self-deprecation long time ago, but his sense of humour was still so far from perfect.

They moved two sunbeds closer to each other: Komaeda sat, pulling knees closer to his chest, and Hinata lied down on his one and slid his free hand under his head. He catched the straw's tip with his mouth, more like nibbling it sluggishly than actually drinking from his glass.

"You told me the story about the cat you found on your way to somewhere," Komaeda remembered. "Is it still in the office?"

"Oh yeah, where else would it be," Hajime gave off pretty much of sarcasm. "By the way, we wanted to pick a name. Though that argue hit the dead end when we couldn't decide between Smoky, Francis the Second and Furry Arsehole.

Komaeda didn't need any hints to guess what Hajime voted for.

"But once he got kicked out of the conference room and needed just a few minutes, when everyone was their for an important briefing, to trash several offices and just leave like he had every right to do it all. Then Asahina called him Byakuya."

Komaeda jingled with a sonorous laugh.

"Now I want to know how Togami-kun would react."

"He is responsible for the different branch at the moment, so he had a good chance to never discover it, but... I guess he really just had to," Hajime chortled merry. "You've seen him: he's not that kind of person who gets mad by such things easily, but his expression was just... I swear, if someone placed them next to each other, we would see a perfect match."

Still giggling, Komaeda made a sip to wet his whistle and choked.

"Hey, who even drinks and laughs at the same time," Hinata scolded him gently while whaking him in the back.

"Sorry," Komaeda answered with a hoarse voice.

"What about that caution of yours so you even refuse to wear shoes with laces?" Hajime teased him.

"It seems that I forget about it with you," Komaeda answered without any trace of irony. Hajime went silent in embarassment. It wasn't the first time when Nagito totally ruined his mood to mock him by coming up with something so hopelessly cheesy. And most likely not the last time.

"Which makes me think," Komaeda spoke using that break. "If somebody asked you to pick an animal which you can associate with me most or which makes you think about me somehow, what would you say?"

_Heck, Nagito, you're the one who's asking me it right now_ , he could hear Hinata's thoughts in his long face, looking quite sceptically at him.

"Why all of a sudden..." he responded. "H-m-m, fine, just let me think."

Komaeda waited patiently, watching how Hajime's eyebrows slid down in a deep, intense thought.

"Hm, I actually have an association," he started slowly. "It's the species of owls, they usually have dark, deep eyes and their faces are flat and white, like a mask..."

"Barn owls," Komaeda got it right away. "That's how they are called."

"Yeah, I know how they are called, thanks to you-know-who. I was worried that you didn't."

"Before you appeared in my life I was cautious enough for not doing anything more dangerous than reading," Komaeda reminded. "I know many not really useful things."

"There is nothing bad about being erudite," Hajime gave him a nervous grin.

"Why a barn owl?"

"You didn't tell that I would have to explain it," Hinata grumbled. "I don't know. Most of owls look bizarre, even creepy sometimes. But those are... lovely. They have kind eyes."

"Ugh," Komaeda chocked on the air. "That was... pretty straightforward, Hajime."

"It's your fault," Hinata said loudly and giggled: he was still acting dorky, but without any shame enjoying Nagito's reaction. "And it's your turn now."

"Mine?"

"Don't tell me that you wasn't expecting me to ask you too."

"I don't know," Komaeda answered without thinking much.

"It's not fair, you haven't even tried," Hajime resented.

"I only have a dog on my mind," Komaeda confessed. "But I don't want this to count."

"Why?"

"I've had a dog already," the weird, hollow smile shadowed his face.

The silence, being filled with too clear understanding, surrounded Hinata and poisoned the air between them. Komaeda was so much concerned about giving Hajime a chance to relax; confusing and uneasy talks like that one wasn't going to help them with it. But that just escaped him on its own, before he remembered every time when with minimum efforts he managed to screw up everything so he could not to do it again this time.

He was planning on forcing out pitiful apologizes when Hajime suddenly sat up, placed the hand on his shoulder and pulled Komaeda a bit closer to him, as close as the distance between sunbeds allowed.

"I'm not going to be a dog," he said, looking into Nagito's face seriously. Komaeda froze paralyzed, with his head went blank immediately, when the aura of his differently colored collected eyes swallowed him.

That soft kiss's warmth went down to Nagito's chest. Slow, almost sleepy breathing he could feel on his lips made him want to fall into sweet, cozy sleep in his beloved's embrace himself.

"You always smell like home," Hajime murmured still too close to his face to Komaeda's mind to work properly.

"It's shampoo," he answered thoughtlessly.

"Dummy," Hajime laughed quietly and run his hand through Nagito's hair, gently took down the guy's head to his shoulder.

It had been a long time since they saw anyone else by the poolside... but it probably was just a coincidence.

They spent a relaxing day, and the sleep won over Hajime's recent habits as soon as he touched the pillow with the back of his head. Next day he returned to his research; he continued to work a lot for days, leaving to the island's hospital from time to time – there was a smal lab, – but at least Komaeda succeed in bringing a healthy balance between being asleep and awake back to his life; sometimes he managed to convince Hinata to take a break and take his mind off in the middle of the day, when he seemed to be less busy.

But he surely had a huge responsibility on the shoulders... he basically had just too much on them. He almost didn't share and still preferred not to involve Komaeda in this, so Nagito wasn't sure how much he could interrupt and distract him from the work, but he usually guessed Hajime's mood well.

Unlike him Komaeda didn't have good reasons to avoid daily chores. He spent few days on a big cleanup and helping Souda to cut the lawn in the park. Though he felt the inner will and need to stay closer to Hajime, he shooked it off with the thought that he hardly could help him with anything. By the evening Komaeda returned to cottage and find Hinata just right there, at his workdesk.

Komaeda needed some time to notice: how Hajime went more silent and less tender again, how he used to look exactly the same when Nagito saw him after hours. Probably, deeply inside he just hoped that the problem would be solved on its own faster then he would have to admit all of those.

Faster was the time running.

***

Komaeda was lying with his face next to the other wall, but sensing uneasy presence too well and seeing the faint blurry light outlining his shadow on it. Most of his life he had sleeping troubles, which usually evaporated every time he listened to smooth sounds of Hajime breathing next to him, but aside from it that was Nagito's sensitive topic. He couldn't tell Hajime how hard it was for him to fall asleep when he worked late in their room: Komaeda bewared of him going to the lab instead, so Nagito would be probably unable to track at which hour Hajime made it to bed.

He kept waiting for that, or for winning over insomnia himself. In any way, he was just waiting for something, long and vainly, and that was pressing and stuffy feeling.

He probably managed to doze off for a little while, because a sudden bounce ran over his backbone with a weak charge of electricity and pushed Komaeda back to the reality; he stared at the table with a clouded eyesight. Hinata wasn't in the room anymore. He could be out briefly to get back soon, Komaeda thought, not being able to resist and search for obvious weak spots in such convenient theory. The thin blanket was pressing him to the bed with too much weight.

A muffled cough which came out of the bathroom countered that Hajime was still there. But that was the thing Komaeda was even more eager to deal with. He turned back onto his other side, ignoring the blanket enveloping him too tight.

He was balancing on the fine line between dream and reality; the head was light and heavy at the same time; and Komaeda was hearing everything as if it was reaching him through the water surface being stretched above him, but still – very loud. Even the silence was too loud.

The coughing stopped, but started again soon, harder. Never stopped this time. Sharp noises made Komaeda remember that feeling of being in the elevator when it stops on the destination floor and all of your entrails jump up, or on an airplane which was gaining altitude, but it also lasted forever. First he got annoyed.

But it had been that impulse which had brang him back to his senses. Komaeda tensed up. Such continuous cough was just... not normal.

Cozy cocoon was now squeezing his ribcage. Nagito had to turn once again to roll out of it. He jumped off the bed and came near the bathroom's door.

He could see Hajime's blurred silhouette behind the glass door, standing next to the sink. The cough had ceased, and Komaeda hesitated whether he actually had to interrupt or not, it probably wasn't necessary at all, because it seemed that nothing weird had happened in the end. But Nagito had already got out of the bed and was standing there, with his palm lying on the doorknob, so he had a right to do it at least for his own peace. And also remind Hajime what time it was.

Komaeda halfly opened the door. The bathroom's lighting was dim, but it ran over Nagito's sleepy eyes with a sweep of a sharp blade.

"Hajime?" he called quietly, struggling to open them again wide enough to see anything. 

And he saw harshly clear how Hajime slowly turned the unusually waggling head in his direction. He was looking at Komaeda like he could barely see him too, as well as focus his sight. No matter at what part of Hajime Nagito looked, it was unnaturaly twitching and shaking: his knees, shoulders, the crease on his sweaty forehead. His left hand clinged to the sink's edge so violently that the knuckles were morbidly bulging behind the pale, stretched skin; with his second he was just as feverishly covering his mouth.

Komaeda couldn't ask Hajime if he was fine. Because with no doubts, surely, obviously his was so hellishly not fine.

The cough returned; just a single cramp gurgled in his throat, but so strong that Hinata bent over and shuddered with his whole body.

Komaeda got closer with few unsteady steps and saw the sink covered with fresh blood. It was oozing through the fingers of Hajime's right hand, no matter how hard he gripped his lower face and tried to hold back another fit. Just a couple of red droplets on the shirt couldn't be more terrifying than what Komaeda had already seen... but for him they was.

He couldn't track at what point his hand reached to Hajime's shoulder; the other guy swayed forward like the gravity was naturally pulling him to Komaeda, but tensed up keeping the distance between them, like the two contrary forces were fighting in him.

Nagito could barely move, but his mind – usually working perfectly in extreme situations – had already drawn the overall picture of what was going on, which he would have rather drawn much earlier or just never.

"Hajime, _you_ were in that team too, right? That one which discovered the meteorites?"

_Of course he was,_

_where else he could've been._

Hajime opened his mouth, but couldn't make it with anything but a low groan; he staggered and fell forward, crashing his forehead into the shoulder of Komaeda, who caught him up.

"...give me... a second," he pushed out hoarsely.

A sensible half of Hinata's weight was pulling him down alongside with the chilling discovery how bad Hajime's own legs were at supporting him. Komaeda wrapped hands around him tight, and a shivering went to them from Hajime's body, though Nagito couldn't be sure that they weren't trembling themselves.

"I'm fine," he said quietly, more lucidly now, but his voice remained awfully weak.

"Of course you are not," Komaeda argued heatedly. There was no response.

_"Please don't pass out, please don't pass out,"_ he desperately kept on repeating in his head.

Komaeda helped Hajime to get back to the room. He collapsed on the bed and stared at the ceiling with clouded eyes; his chest was going up and down heavily, but the breathing went back to normal little by little.

Nagito touched Hinata's forehead. It turned out to be noticeably warmer than usual, but not that hot so he could call it a fever.

"What should I do?" Komaeda asked, doing his best to stay calm.

"Water," Hajime said quietly.

In a heartbeat Komaeda appeared near the table, where the bottle of water was standing. He filled the glass without spilling a single drop despite of his slightly shaking hands. He also grabbed a box of tissues and returned to Hajime.

With his assistance Hinata sat up and – after wiping the blood from his face – made multiple painful gulps.

But in fact, he didn't look better at all. Komaeda could still hear quiet rales echoing in his breathing, and his face remained alarmingly pale. Komaeda didn't know what to do with that situtation, when Hajime must had, but the realization that he could be just unable to extract it in such state was scraping beneath Nagito skin like a swarm of small insects.

"I'll be right back," Komaeda mumbled and burst out of the cottage.

He found the right door in the darkness, just faintly dispelled by bluish glow of the clear night sky. Komaeda, who would usually knock subtly and short hoping not to disturb anyone in the nearest buildings, brang down several rough and impatient punches on it.

It had taken a long – too long – time for Tsumiki's frightened eyes to appear looking at him from the thin slit. Komaeda didn't hear any loud noises, like falling out of bed, from her cottage, but the girl surely was there just seconds ago.

"K-Komaeda-san?" she babbled. "H-have something hap-pen... are you hurt?!" she let out a scream once she noticed dark stains on his t-shirt.

"I need you to go with me, now," Komaeda cut her forcefully.

"Ok-k-kay, just a s-s-second," Mikan cheeped and rushed back inside. Komaeda, who wasn't in the mood to care about whether he was invited or not, followed her.

Crossing the room in haste, Tsumiki stumbled and nearly crushed into the table, but at the last moment managed to keep the balance and hold on to it's border. She was fussing so ridiculously and clumsy, but made it to the medical kit with unexpected determination; the fearful expression on her face washed off and had been replaced by worried but decisive and collected one. She put on her nightgown quick, slid feet into slippers and headed back to the exit.

Hajime was conscious. Nagito tried to gather his thoughts so he could briefly explain Tsumiki the situation, but the nurse had already got down on the bed near Hinata and they were talking quielty – to Komaeda's relief, the guy could talk, – so he just stood aside in silence, leaning on the couch's back. He finally had a moment for himself, and Nagito suddenly found out how tight every nerve of him was; the aching weakness spreading down from his chest went to feet, and a nauseous ball lumped in his throat.

He was listening to Hajime and Mikan's discussion carefully, though he couldn't get the most of it, he heard a lot of words which sounded like various medications. Komaeda focused on Hajime's low voice; he didn't care much about what he was saying, but he tried to hear out _how_ he was saying it.

Tsumiki's pitched voice stabbed his strained, vulnerable ears.

"I don't have all of these things in the cottage, but they should be in the pharmacy..."

"So just bring it here."

"B-b-but you're very unstable!"

As if someone pushed him in his side with all strength, Komaeda came to the table with wide and rapid steps, took a page out the opened notepad and grabbed the first pen he could spot. Then he jumped to the bed and nearly threw all of this at Mikan.

"Write down everything you need. I'll bring it."

She went numb helplessly, being scared by Komaeda's pushy attitude, but the Ultimate Nurse in her had got over it again and she took the pen. While she was diligently writing the column of complicated words, Komaeda quickly pulled on his pants and got into the coat. Soon he had the list in his hand.

Saying nothing that time, Komaeda left.

He ran out of the cottage, but had to drop down his speed once he went out of breath really soon, and he hated himself for that. It could turn out the way that he had no reasons to tear his lungs in the end, because Hajime... he wasn't going to die like that, right? He didn't looked like he was really dying. But Komaeda was aware too well of how life usually doesn't count you in when it decides on what is right and sensible to do.

His way to the pharmacy took an eternity. He had enough time to wonder countless times who in the world even came up with the idea to store medications in the place which, well, was designed for that, but not when you live with a not so big group of you fellows on an inhabitated island. When he finally got there, Komaeda was greeted by long shelves of boxes and vials behind the glass in cold white light. The search could mercilessly steel even more time from him, but his luck gathered everything mentioned in Tsumiki's list an the first case Komaeda decided to check, and he didn't care where it came from – him or Hajime. And even if it was Komaeda's dangerous, hardly predictable luck, he wouldn't hesitate to make such deal with it no matter what it would cost him unless it wasn't Hajime himself.

When Nagito went back, Tsumiki was focused on her patient and didn't react to Komaeda's appearance at all until he handed her the paper bag.

Komaeda took a look at Hajime. He was lying, with tired eyes closed halfly, though Komaeda still could see them a bit under his flattering eyelashes, and remained silent, but it seemed he was awake. Tsumiki took the bag. _How is he_ , Komaeda wanted to ask her, but hesitated for too long, and Mikan had already got back to the work as if there was nobody else in the room besides her and Hajime.

Komaeda got down on the couch, placing his arms on its back and just watching. There was her whole medical kit pulled out and spreaded on the table near the TV, alongside with the vials Nagito brang. If Komaeda managed to forget the whole situtation just for few minutes, he would be able to enjoy the sight of the confident, professional work, which used to impress, mesmerize, even calm him down a bit. Tsumiki occasionally leaned down to Hinata when he said something and responded with a quiet, serene – so rare for her – voice. Komaeda longed to hear out Hajime's voice, but couldn't.

The nurse injected him several times before Hinata fell asleep. Tsumiki checked his temperature once again, and Komaeda noticed that she finally had lightened up a little. The tension had been blown away like a balloon, and nothing about her looked alarming, but she stared at her medical kit sad and wearily while packing it back.

Komaeda had been pondering about when it was already fine to bother her, but Tsumiki addressed him first.

"He will be sleeping until the morning at least," she spoke quietly, coming closer. "You probably have to rest now too."

"The one who really needs rest there is you, Tsumiki-san," Komaeda countered.

"B-but I must monitor his condition. It's not that dangerous anymore, but..." Mikan faltered.

"Go home and sleep. I'll stay with Hajime and bring you back if he seems to get worse or I feel that something is wrong. Of course, if... someone with a medical education is not required to watch him right now," Komaeda added reflectively.

"No, it shouldn't be a problem..." Tsumiki nodded. "But are you sure?"

"Pretty much."

"So..." she said slowly. "I'll be back at the morning to check on him if he need it.

"How serious is it?" finally Nagito dared to ask her.

Tsumiki, who had been still glancing at sleeping Hajime with a worried look, flinched and turned to Komaeda, taking some time to answer.

"He need a couple of days to recover at the very least," she explained almost in a professionally serious tone. "After that he probably will stay fine for a while. But considering, that it's a new virus... I d-don't know how his dicease will progress. I'm sure Hinata-san is more aware than me."

Komaeda nodded in recognition, though the half of what Mikan had said just passed him by. "He will be fine" was everything he wanted to hear.

They finished this conversation while standing in the doorway already. Komaeda opened the door and saw a pale blue sketch of the stone lane in the very early morning's picture. Mikan's rubber slippers started slappily squeaking while she were clumsily walking down it.

"Tsumiki-san," he called her in a low voice. "Thank you so much."

The girl smiled awkwardly in response. Her lips wavered, as if she wanted to say something, but it might be that Komaeda just made this up in his mind.

He stayed alone in the deafening silent room. Nagito suddenly realized how uneasy the rest of that night could turn out to be for him. Undoubtely his exhaustion was nothing comparing to Tsumiki's, who was dragged to a night shift right out of her bed, but the nervous tension drained him, and his legs could barely bend after that long and restless trip to and from the other island.

Komaeda spent the remains of his energy to carefully – trying not to cause any noise – move the chair closer to Hinata's bed. He settled himself on it with a book, placing his leg underneath at the strained angle and balancing on the border the way that he would immediately have a friendly meeting with the floor if he didn't manage to stay concentrated enough. He couldn't pass several hours just staring at the wall, but was afraid of being caught and swallowed by sleep while slowly running his eyes through the lines.

He switched off the room's lights when the world outside the window become aegean blue. Nagito could hardly hear his own thoughts since they layered on top of each other and merged into one heavy stream, but he kept on turning the pages one after another. All of Komaeda's worries, assumptions and expectations turned into white noise, sizzling and frothing like a fizzy water, filling him up, and Komaeda gave up on listening to them, he had no strength for it. Sitting still and thinking about nothing, feeling nothing, almost not recognizing his own existance – the only things which reminded Nagito that he hadn't slept a wink were the heaviness between his temples, hurtfully dry eyes and a dull pain in his numb leg.

Who knows how long he could keep it up like that without irreversible consequences for his sanity. But Komaeda hadn't even been noticing the morning coming and sun rising up and bringing the new day to the room, until the subtle move of Hajime's slightly opening eyes sobered him up. He had been feeling terrible so far, but the delightful relief, which sparked in Nagito's chest – maybe for a single moment, but still, – erased everything else.

Hajime looked at him with sleepy, swollen eyes; he layed, fading into the large bed, like a little boy who catched a cold and had skipped classes this morning and now was squinting from the light too bright for him. Komaeda sat down near him and put the hand on Hinata's forehead: no sign of a fever.

"How do you feel?"

"...alive, I guess," Hajime responded with a low, a bit husky voice. Sounded creepy, but despite of that Komaeda smiled.

"Tsumiki-san said that you need to rest for few days."

"Seems like that," to Komaeda's relief, he agreed. "Sorry. I only have been making you worry lately."

"It's not your fault," Nagito answered softly. "...in general. Just be careful from now on, please."

"I'll do my best," Hinata said with humility.

Komaeda finally noticed that he hadn't take the hand away from his face yet... and to be honest, he didn't see any good reasons to do that right now.

"You know, you're much better than me, Nagito," Hajime suddenly sighed in pensiveness.

Komaeda stared at him. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard. It took forever for him to get used to Hinata's praises and even more – to start believing them at least a little bit. But that was the moment when he didn't understand at all where it had come from, what on the earth Hajime even meant saying something that powerful.

"What?.."

"This night, when you brought Tsumiki there," Hajime started explaining, "to be honest, I thought, "It's useless, she won't do anything, even I don't know what can be done there." But you brang her there with no hesitation. So who does actually believe that a person defines talent and not the reverse there."

Komaeda got him. They left that day so impossibly far in the past, and it was so tragically far from what they got on their hands now, but it was there, still somewhere near, staying as the soft warmth of the sun beneath the skin and sea salt on their cheeks.

No way Nagito could forget it, but was a bit surprised that Hajime brought it up now.

And he was embarassed, but not in a good way. The thought Hajime voiced had absolutely no connection with either Komaeda's intentions and motives, which he was driven by. He wilted and tried to argue.

"I was just extremely worried about you and saw that you needed help. I rushed for Tsumiki-san not because I believed that she could do something, but because I _wanted_ her to do something."

Probably he should've keep it unsaid. But Komaeda couldn't let Hajime believe into lie about himself; he could love him more than Komaeda, in his opinion, deserved that, but not for something that wasn't even a truth.

"Still, you wouldn't do that if you didn't believe in her."

Komaeda didn't see any outcome for this weird argument but an impasse, so he decided to cut it.

"Did you know that you got infected?" he asked.

Hajime brushed messy hairs from his forehead with a slightly nervous move.

"I had a hunch. Though hoped for the best. And I didn't intend to freak out anyone."

"You have to tell the rest now," Komaeda pointed. "Of course, when you feel better..."

"Uh-huh."

He started tossing and turning under the blanket, stretching and flexing his numb muscles. He was faint and a bit moody, but Komaeda was too happy to see him more or less fine and hear his voice.

"Are you hungry? I'll go and pick up something for breakfast, if you want."

"Would be great," Hajime muttered.

Komaeda was prudent and changed the stained t-shirt before going outside.

He entered the restaurant without drawing unnecessary attention to himself: Mioda waved him at the farest table, where she was sitting with other folks, but they seemed to be too occupied with their own discussion. Tsumiki hadn't tell anyone about what happened this night, Komaeda concluded.

Tsumiki herself was hustling near the main table served by Hanamura. Komaeda, who had to go there too anyway, came near and greeted her subtly.

"K-Komaeda-san!" she jumped up, being surprised and nearly freaked out, how she used to. Nagito gave her his time and patience to come to her senses.

"Sorry, I thought you heared my footsteps."

"It's okay..." Tsumiki assured him. "I'm just r-really uncomfortable with people coming from behind."

She seemed like she wanted to add something, but switched the topic suddenly.

"How does Hinata-san feel?"

"It seems, that he's much better now."

Mikan smiled with a genuine relief.

"I'm sure he doesn't need my help now, but still, if I can do something..."

"Thank you," Komaeda responded smoothly. "And Tsumiki-san, I actually have to apologize. You probably saved him, but I was so rough and rude to you."

"You was worried," the nurse exclaimed. "You d-don't have to apologize for something like that."

"But still," he insisted. "Thank you again."

The girl noded, a bit of embarassed, but he face were almost shining.

Komaeda had no plans to stay at the restaurant for too long. He had a good chance yet to leave being rather unnoticed and avoid hard questions, so he took some food for himself and Hajime and hurried back to the cottage.

A vague smile glimpsed on Hajime's drowsy face.

"So breakfast in bed?"

He certainly felt well enough to be sarcastic.

"You asked me," Komaeda reminded.

"Yeah, I would say that it makes it less romantic, unfortunately," Hajime spoke with a faked thoughtfulness.

Komaeda couldn't hold it and decided to tease him back a bit.

"In your childhood, when you was sick and you mother brang you food to bed, did you consider that someday you would call it romantic?"

"H-m-m, actually my mom never did that," Hinata answered quite serious.

"Oh, really?" Komaeda blurted out embarassed.

"Well, I don't remember myself being that sick that I couldn't get out of bed and go eat at the kitchen," Hajime said. "And my parents could left me alone while they were at work."

That discovery was probably not so worth of fixating on and getting upset, but Nagito was caught off guard by the straightly opposite blast.

"Don't look like that," Komaeda could read in Hajime's immediately and expressively changed face that he had seen right through him. "Don't try to be my mother."

"Why?"

"Because you're not her. And actually it's pretty much better like that."

"So who I should be for you?"

Seemingly having fun, Hinata smiled.

"Komaeda Nagito."

"It won't be hard," Nagito assented him playfully. "But you know, then I'm still going to look at you like that."

"Fine, I'll deal with it somehow," Hajime chuckled.

They had a peaceful breakfast together.

"You need some sleep too," Hinata noticed, watching Komaeda with concern.

"Not really, I'm fine," he attemped to argue, but hadn't even finished the sentence yet when he played this thought in his mind again with a bit of confusion: why he would argue in the first place? The longer Komaeda was trying to find a reason, the longer he kept thinking that he had nothing to worry anymore right now. Everything seemed to be unexpectedly fine, almost nice, and he was being dragged to sleep by that.

Ignoring his lame, unreasonable lie, Hajime moved a little bit freeing some space for Nagito on his bed.

"Can I really lay near you?" he hesitated and asked.

"I told you it's not contagious."

"No, I mean..." he wouldn't dusturb a sick person, Komaeda wanted to say, how he wouldn't jump into someone's hospital bed, but their bed wasn't one and Hinata felt not that bad, so it was just probably another error being produced by Komaeda's brain, which had been fuctioning with no sleep for more that twenty hours in a row.

"I mean, if you don't mind," he finished it with a simplier, more basic line, because felt enough dumb already.

"H-m-m-m, actually you're right, I don't know why I've even suggested it... Just listen to how bad it sounds, sharing the bed with a person who I still have to bring to a church and sign some papers so I would be able to say that we really have done anything together," Hajime quipped. "Nagito, I hope you don't mean it."

Even if Komaeda had something to say in response to _that,_ he ate his words nearly choking on them and got to the bed in a humble silence.

"Much better, huh?" Hajime murmured quietly, lovingly caressing Komaeda's hair. He went limp right away and moved closer.

"Wake me up... if you need something..." Nagito whispered with a sleepy, weakened voice.

"No way," Hinata smiled.

Komaeda gave up and let the exhaustion embrace him to the fingertips, which he couldn't even move anymore, but he didn't need it as long as the other fingers continued on touching his head gently, and the warmth – much softer and sweeter than the one radiated by morning sun – was lulling and making him feel safe.

The sleep overcame him right away.


	8. Chapter 8

As Tsumiki presumed, it took two days for Hinata to get back on his feet. He came to the conclusion that the symptoms were so sudden and rough due to stress and overworking. That was the same thing as directly admitting that he had to listen to Komaeda a bit more often.

Hajime had no choice but to tell everyone about the virus. Despite of his worst fears, they accepted it joylessly but mostly keeping their heads among shoulders. It probably wouldn't have been this way if the problem had struck Jabberwock from the very beginning. But the only thing which could exhaust and demoralize them was that long-drawn waiting for something that hadn't happened yet.

They had been through a lot, and now they were here, and they still were themselves, and such hopeful deduction cheered Komaeda up. He believed in all of them... and he believed in Hajime.

Being recovered from that macabre episode, Hajime didn't make the impression of a sick person anymore somehow. There were days when headaches blighted his evenings, but it could be just an effect of too much of brain work. For the rest of time Hajime seemed to be fine, only occasionally being bothered by mild cough, as Komaeda could tell striving to spend as much time by his side as he could.

The world faced the crisis, and Hajime was probably the only person who was able to find a solution. No, more like, if there was a single person who could do that, it was no one but him. It was lying beyond the greatest rensponsibility one could take; the enormous burden must've been pressed him to the ground with a power much stronger than gravity. But Komaeda used to see some connection in everything; his own story was the string of events which hurted him so many times, but in the end every single one of them had some meaning. He believed that on the other hand Hinata might turn out to be the only person who could bear it. The hope inside of him caused ordeals, but it also gave him enough strength to get through them. Hajime had the strength to do it, Nagito thought with no doubt.

Maybe he was wrong.

One of those days Komaeda managed to take Hajime out to the cinema. He didn't mind, though didn't looked so enthusiastic about it as well. He finally slept regularly, had meals properly and did enough breaks in his working schedule, and Komaeda really wanted it to be enough to tell that he was fine.

All films from their cinema archive had already been seen by them at least once. Trying to choose, Komaeda spotted the one of those which he didn't remember so well, so he could actually rewatch it for serious. He asked Hajime for his opinion: he agreed without even thinking it over.

Not so many things could be compared to the apocaliptic view of an empty cinema hall, with so many long rows of lonely seats. Probably the view of empy supermarkets and shelves choked – or worse, totally empty – with various stuff. Or an empty road cafe being left even by its owner. Over years, Komaeda stopped letting such depressing thoughts in his head and looked from a different angle: it was like they lived in a huge doll house – modeled on the world which used to bend you with its rules and realities, but here they could take over the world, and it was literally like achieving so silly but pure and genuine childhood dream. The hollow toy world was lonesome, but ironically, of all of places and moments in his life Komaeda found something completely opposite to the word "loneliness" there.

Nagito was watching the film, glancing at Hajime from time to time. Usually they talked and discussed the movie, especially when it was something they both had already seen and there wasn't anybody in the hall, but today not a single word had escaped Hinata's mouth for the whole session while he was staring at the screen deep in his thoughts, without any interest in plot and characters. He kept fidgeting in his seat and flinched when Komaeda carefully placed the head down on his shoulder. He didn't resist that too, but even such closeness didn't managed to bring him back from afar where he actually was.

Komaeda had already accepted that the movie day was a bad idea, but these words were getting more and more bitter on his lips until he gave up on ever saying them out loud: Nagito was afraid that Hajime would agree with that thoughtless again.

They made it till the end of the film and came back home. After short and basically forced conversation, Hinata returned to his table and turned on the laptop, giving off some sort of relief, if not it. _Oh, of course,_ Komaeda thought almost audibly. He stared at Hajime in frustration and couldn't find any courage to move for a good minute, as if he was going to say or do something... Not like he knew what. He wasn't sure what else he could do to help him without crossing the line. If he continued like that, listening to this unpleasant, itchy feeling – he would have to admit that he was only trying to satisfy his own disgusting selfishness with that... and what was even worse, he might have been actually doing it from the start.

There were still two hours left until the dinner, and Komaeda picked up a book and moved to the couch. The book turned out to be interesting enough to steal time from him unnoticed, and Nagito remembered about it only by the point when the sunlight, falling through the window, had colored pages into coral.

Though it was a bit too early to go to the restaurant yet. But all of unread words and lines blurred and faded in Komaeda's eyes when a quiet but still too distinct cough reached his ears.

"Hajime, how do you feel?" Komaeda raised his head and saw his shoulders: like he was doing his best to keep them still, while they were shuddering slightly but noticeable.

"I'm fine," Hinata answered sharp, and it didn't make Komaeda want to argue with him more; he was silently looking at Hajime's back until he began coughing again.

"Maybe it's better to take a break?" he said. "It's dinner soon. I can bring it there, but if you're fine for real, we can just go to the restaurant together..."

"Yeah, sure, just give me a bit more time," Hajime cut him quick, without breaking away from work, and the tiny switch somewhere inside of Komaeda finally clicked.

"What's "a bit more time" for you right now?" he asked coldly.

"Like five minutes," Hajime grumbled as if he hadn't noticed the abrupt shift at all.

"Are these five minutes even going to change anything?" Komaeda spitted out with all of exasperation and tiredness he had been keeping inside so far.

Hinata turned his head. He finally looked involved: eyebrows arched and went up on his forehead, and he stared at Komaeda with a wordless question; but a moment later, when Nagito was already expecting to get a backfire of his irritation, instead of that what actually had broken his expression was the fear. Komaeda felt cold again, but in the other way.

"Nevermind, you're right," Hinata mumbled. He turned around his chair so clumsy that he actually might've been ended up on the floor. "It won't change anything at all."

Komaeda got terrified to his bones by unexpectedly powerful effect of his stupid words, which he would've never said if he had just heard in advance how Hajime's voice was shaking right now.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I haven't moved in inch," he pushed out. "I'm stuck. I haven't felt it since... he appeared. But if even he can't do anything..."

"Hajime, calm down."

Komaeda rose up with a spring and relocated to the floor, hunkering down before Hinata, though he couldn't explain why he had to do that, it was more like a deep intuition, guiding his body, than his mind. He gripped his both arms and looked straight into Hajime's face.

"You can do this. And will. You just need some more time, and you'll definitely..."

Last words never left his throat, stuck and dissolved in it, when he couldn't ignore anymore: how Hajime was looking back at him not in confusion, or doubt, but with desperate denial.

A thin wave of air had slid between Hajime's arm and Nagito's wet palm.

"Something happened, right?"

"Naegi called. One person from the first infected group had died last night."

He wanted to pretend that he had never asked that question – so he could ask it once again and get the true, any other answer to it. Komaeda froze wordless.

He couldn't just say that, right? That word which never caused any special resonance in Komaeda, who had everything around him entangled by thorny vines of losses and death since the day he was born. He himself – for unknown and unexplained reason – was created so he could die the slowest and cruelest way, staying sane enough to remain conscious about everything that was going on: become the last one who would be strangled and torn apart by them, no matter how it would be.

But in the end, he was alive. The sun shined in the sky, his personal sun shined for him on the ground and the sun shined inside of him. Accepting all unappealing and hopeless sides of life used to be the act of his prudence: the longer you stay in the darkness the more your eyes adjust to it, the easier it's adapt to it and survive, whereas light can blind you.

"That won't happen to you," Komaeda exhaled, while still clinging to Hajime's arms with his fingers. The weakness suddenly got all over him, and Nagito dropped his head down. It was his own voice which he heard in his head and immediately lost all of his strength and probably sanity to it: so old and gruesome that his guts twisted, which victoriously countered that actually that was what was supposed to happen all along.

Hajime bent over and carefully let go of Komaeda's grasp so he could wrap his shoulder with this arm. The guy squeezed the other one with surprising intensity and leaned forward, his knees flopped on the floor.

"I'll do my best to make sure that won't happen," Hajime said quietly with a dark confidence. There was now another faith in Komaeda's chest, trembling with a heavy breath. 

He'll do his best, of course he'll do. But "best" doesn't mean "enough".

Komaeda embraced him with his arms wide, as if he tried to rake up all of shattered pieces of himself and put them back together. He was slowly regaining the clearness of his mind, which reminded Nagito he had to get a grip if the will to help Hajime really had the absolute power and importance in him.

"I'm here," he mumbled, finally looking up at Hinata. "If you need something, I'm always here."

"I know," his astonishing eyes were so calm and lingered on him, before Hinata layed the hand down on the back of his head and gently pulled it closer; Komaeda pressed the cheek to his neck.

"Let's have dinner already," Hajime said.

The other guy subtly nodded. 

He actually had no reasons to feel better, but Komaeda felt. They stood up together, and Hajime was still holding his hand not really tight but undoubtely intentional when they went outside.

They weren't only ones who headed to the hotel. Familiar voices echoed with the soft splashing of pool's surface swaying in the wind. Out of habit Komaeda waved to Kuzuryuu and Pekoyama, when he noticed them on the other side. Few people were crowding near the building's entrace.

It was a normal evening, just like others. The sun was setting in its usual pace, bringing the day near to its end. No matter what secret it kept, but Jabberwock's consistency even at times like that was truly the most precious thing they had right now. The whole world couldn't become more of home for them than just one godforsaken archipelago in the middle of the ocean.

Komaeda sensed a nice smell coming from the restaurant. All of Hanamura's quirks were worth of tolerating for at least three – not mentioning that he was their classmate too after all – good reasons every day.

Being disctracted, Komaeda quickly reacted and turned when Hajime suddenly pulled his hand forcefully.

"M-m, what's up?" he said light-mindedly. Though this move of Hinata was pretty weird: it wasn't guiding him as if Hajime changed his plans about the dinner or just wanted to hurry him; it was pulling him... down? But Komaeda didn't have to time to even process with this thought, when the weight crashed onto his right shoulder, and he first had to focus on not falling down himself, but stopped caring about that as soon as he understood.

"Hajime?!"

He tried frantically to keep Hinata standing on his feet, but they were just slipping by ground with a rustling noises instead of finding a support in it. Then he clutched him lubberly, being guided by a visceral willingness that he couldn't let Hajime fall even if he would fall himself. He belatedly thought about calling for help, but Kuzuryuu and few more of his classmates were already running towards them. 

Hajime clearly was unconscious completely. Komaeda was holding him from behind with the arm on his chest, he was hoping that the sticky wetness between his fingers was nothing else than his own sweat.

Kuzuryuu and Owari helped him to take Hajime back to the cottage. Tsumiki showed up right away. In less than half an hour Nidai and Souda brought facilities from the hospital, and then all of them, including Komaeda, were politely but insistently shoved out of the door.

Nagito was shivering again. He sat down right on the wooden boards before the cottage, pulling legs to his chest. Most, if not all of his classmates huddled at a distance, discussing something. Komaeda wasn't listening. He didn't noticed how they left to the hotel side before Sonia got down next to him, gently drawing his attention.

"Komaeda-san, I think you should go with us."

"I'll wait here," he responded quietly, trying to sound steady.

Sonia gave him a nice but sad smile.

"I can stay too if you want."

"Thank you for your concern, but I'd prefer being alone," Komaeda quickly refused.

She was courteous enough to offer him help... and courteous enough to accept his rejection. Finally Komaeda ended up being the only one left outside the cottage nearby.

_It can't be happening_ , had been echoing in his head for countless times before leaving him alone too. In the short time that Tsumiki had been isolated inside with Hajime, he had already acquired the bitter taste of regret, sweeping him off his feet, in full. He was too naive, too eager to mistake the things he wanted to be real for the actual reality; too foolish, mindless, truly disgusting... he wasn't even in the mood to measure his actual capacities with common sense, so Komaeda had no idea how he could've fixed, changed it if he had been given a chance to go back in time with that uneasy awareness, but he needed that so wild.

_I don't want to loose him_ , Komaeda thought with so ridiculous sadness and fear only a little boy can had once he discovered that a fresh cut hurts and oozes blood.

He was just sitting there, staring blank into space, while his pulse was beating heavily in his head. The empty stomach soon got squeezed by a hollow nausea feeling reaching his very throat, and not because he was still hungry.

It was almost dark when the vague wave of air, coming from the door being opened, run over his back. Without even thinking it out, Komaeda jumped on his feet. Tsumiki looked exhausted and seemingly worried; she reacted and recoiled in such weird way, like she hadn't enough vim even for that, when Komaeda suddenly rose in front of her.

"What's going on, how is he right now?" Nagito exhaled. The nurse's sight pointed at him, but the eyes kept just wandering without focusing on Komaeda at all. That was such a loud silence. Tsumiki seemed to be wording out her responce, but it took her so painfully long.

"His condition is quite unst-table, but if nothing changes and Hinata-san doesn't regain conciousness soon, he may go into coma..."

"What?!" he shouted, barely letting Tsumiki finish her talking. The girl jerked, but gazed into his face vigorously, surprisingly assertive and determined.

"I'll do everything I can! I promise, I'll do everything, b-b-but..!"

Komaeda was struggling to look into the door gap behind her; he hardly could see anything, and it was astoundingly how he managed to hear out muffled, feverish voice coming from the inside, which called his name. Nagito chocked and Tsumiki startled.

"B-b-but he just have been... Komaeda-san!"

There was enough of medical appliances inside to mistake the room for a hospital ward. Some of those was connected with Hajime's limp body lying on the bed, and that only thing made Komaeda stop keeping the safe distance. He froze and didn't dare to come closer, but also didn't had the strength to do a single step away.

Hajime tilted his head back on the pillow; he had his eyes nearly closed, but the eyelashes were trembling above the clouded pupils. If Tsumiki didn't reacted alongside with him, Komaeda would think that he just heared things: could Hajime really say anything at state like that?

"I'm still very busy with him," the nurse reminded about herself. 

"Can I be of any help?"

"Thanks, Komaeda-san, b-but not this time."

"May I stay here at least?" Nagito asked her almost begging.

Tsumiki hesitated for a moment, but nodded absently.

After getting this permission, he would do anything: crawl into the farest corner, sew his mouth and don't give off any sound for hours. He wanted to help Hajime or at least know how bad he was and what was going to happen to him. He just couldn't let himself to bother Tsumiki any more.

But the nurse spoke on her own.

"I should've been more observant. I offered to examine him for several times, but Hinata-san kept refusing... I thought he just didn't need my help, which is understandable, b-b-but..."

"You mean he was avoiding you?" Komaeda said slowly, feeling how the heavy, chilly void started growing in his chest.

"I should've figured it out earlier!" the girl exlaimed plaintively. "B-b-but I just can't believe that... he did looked and acted fine so far, didn't he?"

Komaeda's legs began aching flabbily. He started to move back weak and shaky towards the couch, still looking at the nurse.

"I would say that?.."

"He's almost in a critical condition," Tsumiki explained. "Such changes in the body can't happen in one day. Hinata-san... must've felt that."

"What changes?" Komaeda asked before he thought that he was probably not so fond to know that.

But Tsumiki started explaining. She was good at avoiding too complicated medical details and terms, but even without them Nagito was getting more and more sick by the size of that diagnoses' list, which even he could call something which ones usually don't live with that easy. He still was refusing to accept, refusing to believe, and Komaeda himself was the one who kept pushing him back to the reality with no mercy left and yelling "Man up!". The last time he was that scared when flame jumped the black curtain.

He made it to the couch, which was supposed to be the lifeboat for his body becoming less and less obedient, but he couldn't even see it being buried under huge piles of stuff. The wide opened medicine chest, medication packs, empty ampoules. Some rags. Actually none of those could draw Komaeda's attention in a chaos like that, expect for the last thing. Ice pierced his insides with a violent stab; Nagito got petrified, staring at bloodstains which seemed to be not fully dried out yet.

He thought that he heared Tsumiki's voice calling him – just a moment before everything went black.

***

The room was filled by the fan's quiet roar. That was so ordinary, sort of natural sound out there – on the tropical island – that Nagito would've never noticed it if it hadn't been just a bit of different, with its vanes creaking louder than usual.

With an unsure move he turned his head lying on the pillow: the airflow, enveloping his face, slid down his cheek and touched the neck. The fan must be standing right next to the bed, Komaeda thought before he actually saw it.

Not only this was out of place since he woke up confused by that. The ceilling above him, the bed underneath him and even vague but very specific scents surrounding him – they were familiar, but yet completely different. 

Komaeda opened his eyes wide; it felt like a huge balloon had been shoved into his head and somewhere deep inside his irritation, being violently pressed into the skull, couldn't stop ranting about how helpless and vulnerable Komaeda was, processing with his thoughts so slow. 

The sheet under his palm stretched; something weighty got down on the bed. 

"Komaeda-san?" Sonia called him quietly. "How do you feel?"

Terrible. Coincidentally right after he was asked about it, his mouth had been filled up with something bitter and grinded, like sand on his tongue; the fan felt too good blowing his sweaty neck where his hairs were stuck to it.

Nagito finally recognized his own cottage: all of them were pretty similar inside, but that one seemed and felt too empty to belong to someone else. Komaeda almost hadn't showed up there since he moved to Hajime's place. He was surprised how the air didn't smelled like a pure dust, and the room itself actually wasn't giving off the coldness and hostility of an abandoned place. There were still some books lying on the table, which Komaeda didn't took away with him.

But remembering out on his own why and how he had ended up there, and why among of all people the first one he saw being waken up was Sonia, turned out to be too difficult for Nagito.

"What happened?" he asked directly and was surprised, how weak and faintly his voice sounded.

"You passed out," the girl explained. "We had to bring you there."

Komaeda couldn't remember it of course, but already found enough evidence of what she had said in himself. It seemed that until the very last moment he hadn't been realizing that it was just too much for him – because it was too much for him for too long already and he couldn't imagine that some kind of a critical point even existed for him – and it just leaded to something which should've stepped out as the defence mechanism to protect him, to help him, but in the end it did worse.

Komaeda sat up and was displeased how reluctant his body was to obey him. His mind remained sluggish and heavy, and he barely felt anything. But even like that he couldn't ignore the absolute shame echoing in him. Bearable, but undeniable and impassive like a death sentence.

He was ashamed that he had literally fainted because of his emotional distress in the same room with the person who probably was actually dying. And that right now, despite of thinking and worrying about Hajime, Komaeda felt too sick about coming back to his cottage.

"How long have I been unconscious?"

"Um... about five hours, I think," Sonia answered very unsure.

"Not like it matters now anyway, it's a middle of the night already," Togami's voice came.

He turned to Nagito from behind the couch's back.

There was times when Komaeda would be confused, but then something slippery and sticky, like a guilt, would start wiggling in his stomach, coming from the discovery that two people somehow considered him worthy enough to bother themselves with looking after him for many hours. He managed to overcome it in the end... but right now he was feeling not exactly the same but too close. And it seemed almost right, totally valid feel, which Komaeda probably could, but didn't want to shake off. And with that he would still find that great if Hajime could show up and slap his face hard.

"Then you better to take care and try to get some sleep," he responded to Togami's comment. "I'm really sorry that you had to stay there with me for so long..."

Sonia went upstraight, looking genuinely concerned.

"But Tsumiki-san checked on you and told that you shoudn't be left alone until the morning, even if you wake up earlier."

_Wonderful, now I know that Tsumiki-san as well wasted the precious time on the wrong person,_ Komaeda thought, pushing the polite smile out of his face muscles.

"I'm fine and I don't think that anything is going to happen to me."

It looked like she saw through Komaeda's made-up tranquillity, because the girl had changed her strategy too. The princess casted a serious look to him and spoke with that confident, indisputable voice of her.

"You can't know it for sure, and we all are responsible for each other, no matter what happens."

"If you don't like causing troubles for others," Togami stepped in their argue. It was amazing how he could sound with a bit of annoyance but also compassion at the same time, "then right now you better to calm down and let others do what's better to you."

Komaeda hadn't enough energy to refute two people possesing influence and authority over others at once. He really had nothing else to do but to "calm down".

"How Hajime is doing?"

"I hadn't checked on him for two hours. I was going to do it soon, but nobody reached us so far, so it's most likely that nothing has really changed."

"But still, it would be nice..." Komaeda asked him hiding his need so poorly.

"Well then."

Togami's bulky body rose up high above the couch. With steady pace, he went to the door.

There was a little hiccup when he opened the door, but before Komaeda asked he heared the new voice.

"So what's up?"

"He have just waken up," Togami moved on the side, and Komaeda exchanged looks with Souda – he was the one that voice belonged to – and Kuzuryuu standing in the doorway.

"And nearly shoved us out right away," Togami added. "So he is fine, I suppose."

It was a convenient coincidence that they had run into each other like that, but come to think of it, those two could head there with the news Togami had been waiting for hours, which hadn't necessarily to be good. Komaeda swallowed the sour lump in his throat and asked.

"Do you know anything about Hajime?"

"Tsumiki is still there," Kuzuryuu answered rather calm. "She asked to tell you that she decided to stay with him til the morning and... well, as I understood, he is not worse at least. But she didn't let us inside."

"Because you have nothing to do there," Togami noted harshly. "But it means that there is no need to fuss until the morning. Go get some sleep... and tell everyone who's still maundering along outside the same."

Souda mumbled something about that they're not kids, but was ignored.

"Yeah, that's what we'll do," Kuzuryuu said.

"I'll stay with Komaeda-san," Sonia reported.

"What?!" Souda bursted in bewilderment. "Why?"

"Tsumiki-san asked for this..." Sonia glanced at the mechanic, slightly perplexed by his reaction.

"I know, b-but..!"

"For god's sake, Souda, if you're up to what I'm thinking about, make you head work somehow and figure out on your own what's fucking wrong with you, or I kick you," Kuzuryuu groaned through his teeth, rolling the eyes.

"But... he's still a guy!" he tried to defend himself.

"Years go by, but you're the same dumbass."

"It's the most nonsensical argument I've ever witnessed in my life," Togami sighed. " _I_ will stay here, any objection?"

Souda shut his mouth and was staring at the doorjamb, shuffling where he stood with noticeable discomfort.

"I think Togami-kun alone would be enough," Komaeda interfered.

"If it's okay... then I'll go too," Sonia got up and headed to the door, though it hadn't escaped Komaeda's notice how hesitant she still was. "Good night."

"Same to you," Togami responded for the both of them.

The door closed, leaving some fresh night air in the room. Byakuya returned to the couch, and Komaeda heared how the pillows sagged under his weight.

"I'm going to sleep, don't disturb me for no reason," he announced straight away. "Tsumiki-san left sleeping pills on the windowsill in case you wake up before the morning. But as I can recall, you hadn't a chance to eat, so if you're hungry, say it now."

The emptiness in his stomach was something Komaeda had been pretty well aware of so far, but he couldn't call it a hunger. A hunger, roughly speaking, usually referred to that state when a person wanted to eat – and he hadn't such want inside of him at all.

"Don't worry about that," he responded.

Komaeda lifted himself to reach the pack of pills and the bottle standing next to it. He didn't know yet if he was going to have that severe sleeping issues that he actually needed them, but probably it was already clear by how he gave up without a struggle.

He settled down on the bed, curling on his side. He heared how Togami rose once again and then the room got dark. Nagito was still lying without a move when the couch's side went noiseless, but then the silence was broken with a quiet, intermittent snoring. The medication worked slow, and Komaeda, being left alone in the darkness, was waiting for it as if it was the last thing he had to care for the rest of his life.

As if tomorrow wasn't going to come at all; and that ugly, unhealthy feeling somehow was the best.


	9. Chapter 9

He woke up at dawn without confidence that he had slept, but he was ready to believe, if was told, that for all of those hours he had been dead. Maybe he felt so bad because he should've just stayed this way. The more he failed to try doing this the more hated the concept of life itself.

Komaeda was too focused on that hatred and white noise in the head – heavy like a steel ball, – to let himself feel the pure fear, but the anxiety, swarming somewhere in his solar plexus, was what made his body move and blood run in his veins. The person truly dear to him wasn't fine, he himself wasn't fine, none of them all was fine, this whole damn world wasn't fine – and this feeling kept his nerves tense, even when Nagito didn't realize it.

Togami was asleep yet, in some remarkable way managed to got comfortable on the narrow couch, also fixedly enough. Komaeda had no reasons to wake him up. He went to the bathrooom with the light, bird-like walk.

Right now Komaeda needed just anything to be fine badly. He stared at his own reflection in the mirror: puffy eyelids were drooping heavily both above his eyes and under them, hair was a matted mess; clothes being left on him since yesterday looked like an unmade bed. Without thinking about it for too long, he began to pull it off with a quiet squeemish howl. He didn't have any spare with them here, but he felt more like shoving back into it the spare himself.

He took a shower and got back to the room. Togami was still sleeping and didn't even flinched when Nagito carefully passed him on his way to the door. He hesitated a little, standing at the doorstep to close it quietly enough and remember the right direction. The chilly wind ran through his wet yet, dried just with a towel hair and hit him to the bones. Komaeda shivered and pulled on his hood to warm up, but another chill was already going down inside him, counting his vertebra one by one.

There was no other living soul around listening to waves crashing in the distance, which was just another incarnation of the silence. Komaeda stopped by Hajime's cottage. Tsumiki might be sleeping or still looking after Hinata, and either way it was a bad time for Komaeda to show up (he couldn't help this sickening feeling awaking in him that the whole life was a bad time for him to show up), but he couldn't wait anymore, he couldn't keep running away and hiding; he was ready to sit next to the door and patiently look forward to its opening, no matter how soon or not so soon it would happen.

Komaeda knocked subtly. If Tsumiki wasn't awake for real, it wouldn't disturb her. He waited: a bit longer than is was reasonable, but because he just had nowhere else to go. And when he almost got his hope down, the door finally opened.

"Komaeda-san?" the nurse quietly greeted him. She didn't looked too energetic, but not really sleepy; probably, she had a chance to rest or even take a nap earlier. "Do you feel better?"

"Yes, and I'm so sorry about making you worry about me among all," Komaeda was tactfull, but wanted to make it obvious that he would rather close this topic. "May I come inside?"

"Yes, of course," so encouraging that Komaeda nearly panicked, Tsumiki backed away letting him to enter.

The faint, translucent rays of the early sunrise were falling into the room through the wide opened window, but by how stuffy it still was there Komaeda assumed that she opened it just shortly before he came there. Almost nothing reminded him about the yesterday's shambles: the short row of vials was neatly sorted out on the sill; she even changed the sheets.

And he was just right there, and Komaeda could neither take his absent sight away from him nor look at him properly.

"Honestly I'm glad that you're there," Tsumiki said. "I need to take a walk for my cottage... and also take out something for breakfast."

"I can bring whatever you need," Komaeda offered immediately.

"No-no, thank you," she refused, "I can do it myself, but I need someone to stay there, and I wanted to ask you about it."

"If you say so," Komaeda had no intention to question the nurse's competence, so he lost the point of arguing.

She left so fast that Komaeda didn't even have a chance to ask her about Hajime, but now, when they stayed alone, he could only find all of answers he needed on his own. He hadn't heard a single noise from his side so far, as well as he hadn't sensed any movement, so he seemed to be sleeping, or unconscious, which wasn't the same thing in his case.

Komaeda sat on the bed's edge timidly, trying not to disturb Hajime. He was lying with eyes closed and his face that pale that Nagito's hand placed on it wouldn't probably make any difference in the skintone like that. He had been hesitating for a long while before he actually dared to touch him; gently, with just his fingertips running across his neck, and Hajime's existance, his presence had never been that shocking for him before.

Then his eyes opened. Maybe he wasn't sleeping from the beginning; maybe was halfly asleep even now – but he was looking straight at Komaeda: he was so hollow and dim, whacked to the toes; and yet, he did surely know who was the one in front of him.

The previous evening suddenly crushed Nagito with a wave of pain in his stomach: how they headed to the dinner... but never made it there. That was like forever ago – so far back in time, but he was chocking on such unfair incompleteness; because in the world, where they never did that, nothing will ever go right again. They just must've reached the restaurant, must've finished that day in the nice and warm company of their friends, who was almost their family now, and Hajime's every single smile, every single laugh would've been a small victory, because he knew how he was worn out by his work and worrying about everything too much, and...

Komaeda cried.

He couldn't hold loud whimpers and couldn't even care about that; he just pushed his face into Hajime's pillow, pressing the cheek against his neck and clinging to his shoulder weakly. Nagito didn't see anything but blurry folds on white fabric, and he flinched, being almost freaked out, when the hood got slowly taken off his head by someone else's hands.

"Hey," Hajime called for him whispery. Somehow he was smiling, forced and sad, and the loud inhale shook Komaeda's chest.

"Sorry," he pushed out through his sobbing with no idea what he was apologizing for: for being too weak and worthless, or for loving him too much, or for whatever else. Hajime's hand, which had been still holding his coat, pulled down flabbily. They again had just one inch and a lot of tears between them. Hinata pressed his lips to Nagito's cheek.

Everything good Komaeda ever had in his life he got just to lose it sooner or later: it wasn't an exaggeration, a promise or a prediction, it was just the truth with which Komaeda could deal in any way he'd prefer. He used to believe it before. And then – just try not to forget competely. Once Komaeda admitted his feelings for Hajime, he accepted all of consequiences it was probably going to have. He accepted that this love was important enough for him: the most and the last precious thing ever that he was ready to die for, in sense of not a physical but much more dreadful death. He could believe the best – that it's finally the end of the darkness and the circle of his destructive, poisonous luck – and yet to be fully aware and gladly embrace that in the end this love would probably kill him. Yes, it's going to be my death, _he_ is going to be my death, Komaeda thought with a cool confidence. He just couldn't experience the true weight of his choice at that point.

He wasn't even trying to get a grip on himself. Komaeda had been howling in anguish, swallowing salty drops running down to his mouth, until all of this loud pain escaped him. Emptied, he was lying next to Hajime and stroking his forelock thoughtlessly, with eyes fixed on him despite of how heavy his eyelids were now.

Tsumiki had been away for quite long time already. Probably on purpose.

When Nagito had stopped sniffling, Hajime spoke.

"I'm glad to have you there."

"Me too," Komaeda responded, doing his best to swallow those words will all of their bitterness.

He wanted to stay in this moment for forever. Not the best they ever shared in their lifes, far not the one Komaeda would like to end up being stuck with, but if it was the last station where they could get off the train before it reached its destination – well then. Somewhen Komaeda didn't even notice it, their fingers got interwined on Hajime's chest. 

"I just... don't get it," Komaeda started thinking outloud. "If it's all up to my luck – yours should be the stronger one. And if I have nothing to do with this, it shouldn't be happening all the more. If I were you, I would more likely be the only person from that team to _not_ get infected... it has always been that way. So I don't understand."

"It just may be not about luck or luck circle this time, you know," Hinata aswered in low voice and a bit slower than usual, but it was such a pleasant surprise and, well, luck that he could even stay in the conversation being like that. Komaeda was glad... but the thing Hajime had said itself bowled him over.

"Not about luck?" Komaeda sat. "Hajime, if it had been so easy, my whole life might've been something else, but I somehow get to know it only now... it's just not how it can work."

"I'm not trying to say that your life up till now has been just a bad joke, or something like that," Hajime countered right away. "But things can get different. Sometimes they just happen and we're not supposed to know why."

Komaeda shook his head. That was not a good time to argue at all, but he couldn't fake himself being convinced.

"Okay, so if you still believe in this, how do you think it all should end?" Hinata stumped him with a straightforward question.

And it destroyed Komaeda's confidence... in everything. Because if he still believed it all for real, he didn't had a single reason to cry, to feel pain or be scared. Komaeda was scared. But he turned his back to his fear, shove a shiver deep underneath his skin, and then he looked at Hajime with calm and said what he had to say.

"It has to be alright in the end. You still... have Kamukura-kun by your side, right?"

"Oh yeah, where would he even have gone," Hajime grunted. "For some reason that arrogant asshole doesn't seem to be so cooperative lately though," his short, unsure chuckle turned into the sore coughing. "I'm fine, I'm fine, I swear... well, just would've been much worse, I mean."

Tsumiki showed up with the serving tray: the steaming plate of breakfast on the one side and few packs of some pills on the other.

"Komaeda-san, you need to eat too," the nurse reminded. "Sorry, I would get something for you too, but I was afraid that I wouldn't bring there that much without dropping it..."

"Don't apologize. You don't have to worry about something like this," Komaeda left the bed with a bunch of heavy and ungainly moves. In the corner of his eye he noticed how Hinata's head followed him, kind of reflexively... though he probably just looked at Tsumiki. But for Nagito the first theory was much more appealing, he couldn't deny that.

"You can go to the hotel to eat," the girl suggested. "I'll stay there for a while anyway."

"Alright, then I'll be back soon," Komaeda hurried to the exit, but only so he could be done with this as soon as possible. He barely managed to ignore his stomach – which hadn't been received anything edible, expect for sleeping pills, since the yesterday's lunch – aching by that point. But the slight griping going down his throat was rather a sign of anxiety and annoyance than his appetite whetting.

It hadn't been that long; the morning had just come into effect, and the only ones who Komaeda met at the restaurant were Hanamura and Gundham. The first one usually woke up pretty early, and the other, probably, hadn't touched a bed this night at all, though you wouldn't know it to look at him. That made Nagito think that he maybe actually possesed some kind of dark magic power after all.

They both weren't in the mood to bug Komaeda with talks and questionings, so he had a chance to focus on stuffing himself to live and getting back to Hajime quick. He might be not that much of help there. But he wasn't going to leave him ever again.

After the breakfast he scurried back as he promised. From the doorway he saw Hajime, who was now lying still, with eyes closed. Before Komaeda asked, Mikan answered whispering.

"He has fallen asleep again. He may take short and restless naps from time to time now, but it's okay, he needs a lot of rest..."

"May we talk outside?"

The nurse hesitated for a second, but nodded in recognition and walked towards Komaeda. Hajime and his treasured peace had stayed behind the closed door, and they two were now standing on the doorstep in front of each other. That was when Nagito asked Tsumiki the question which he had to ask, despite of how it was most likely going to set things straight in the way he didn't want.

"How bad is it?"

Mikan didn't seemed to be surprised. Come to think of it, Komaeda noticed that uneasy, vaguely worried look appeared on her face even before they went out of the cottage. Of course she knew what he was going to ask to her. And it was the answer she didn't wanted to give him, too. But the nurse was back again; Tsumiki went straight and perfectly calm even under Komaeda's intense look.

"Right now his life is out of danger; I did everything I could and I will monitor his condition, but... there is no cure for this virus yet. I know that Hinata-san had been researching it the whole time, I can take a look, b-but I don't think I can be much of help there... Everything I can do for him at this point – to try suppressing the symptoms. But he's still sick... and most likely that it will be getting worse."

"How much time he has left?" Komaeda asked with muffled voice.

She remained calm, as the Ultimate Nurse was supposed to be – which amazed Komaeda first, and second – that faint but still noticable gleem of genuine sorrow breaking through it.

"With medications and bed rest... about two weeks."

  
  


More than three weeks passed and Hajime was still there. He would rarely leave his bed and almost never – the cottage. Komaeda would go outside out of necessity only.

The island's situation hadn't changed even a little bit since then, though Nagito had less and less time and concern left to keep a track on it: the world out of the cottage was now just the source of excess, useless information to him, unless it would've came out with a miraculous cure popping out of nowhere, or something else which could change the fact that the worst had already happened for Komaeda.

Not yet despair, but it wasn't even hope in its true sense: he kept living through every day with just a half of his feelings and worries, as if the time ended and stopped right there and tomorrow was never supposed to come for the whole world. Komaeda was rational and had enough behind his back to never get back into that extreme way of thinking, and yet he rather was able to imagine a sudden happy end or the universe collapsing – but not much more grounded reality, lying somewhere in between, where the next day, and even the day after it blasphemously comes without the most important person ever born.

Tsumiki kept coming every day, examining Hajime, pulling out medications from her box: different and unrecognizable every time, until at some point Komaeda noticed that they were now just sleeping pills and painkillers. And he hadn't to ask Mikan anymore about Hinata's condition, because he could see it himself: slowly and so dangerously impalpable, he had less strength to fight left every day. He wouldn't sleep as much as he probably should during the daytime, but he would rarely speak and respond to Komaeda when he would try to have a talk while cleaning the room or doing his own things (which he actually didn't care about at all). He would use to cease once he would realize that he would end up monologuing for too long, which no one probably needed, and would freeze for a moment every time when the silence would suddenly get broken by a question or something else Hajime would say to make him speak again.

And he would. He would smile to him softly when their sights would meet, though Hajime would stop smiling back soon. Being waken up in the middle of the night by noisy, painful breathing, almost a groan, Komaeda asked Tsumiki to change the sedative she had been giving to him. But the only thing she managed to do for Hajime – to give him stronger sleeping meds every evening.

Komaeda was afraid even to touch him with his hands breaking everything they reach before, but now he wouldn't even need Tsumiki's help to handle a needle without a twitch, and he couldn't say how much times he had seen Hajime's blood since it made him faint in such ridiculous way back then. _I'm totally useless, but I can just be by his side,_ Nagito kept repeating to himself. If the way to the library hadn't been so far from where he actually should've been these days and hadn't taken so much of already limited time, he might've found himself at Hajime's workdesk under the pile of biology and medicine books one day.

Komaeda got implicitly relieved from usual island chores; in fact he could only guess what others were up to those days since he would only met them at restaurant or just run into occasionally somewhere else. All of them had happened to visit Hajime at least once, but the more time would pass the bigger the abyss between them would grow and the more uneasy both sides would feel facing each other. Nagito couldn't judge his classmates; he understood that they wanted to believe the best and stay positive, which was much easier to do while not witnessing Hinata with their own eyes. They knew everything regarding him mostly from Tsumiki. Komaeda just kept doing what he was supposed to.

That was another morning when he woke up and checked on Hajime first of all. They had breakfast together and Komaeda left to the laundry. The place they called the laundry was just the room in hotel's old building with two washing machines in it. It probably was not so enough for sixteen people, but at the beginning of their life on Jabberwock they didn't even have this until Souda spent the whole night reviving the old shabby wreck they were lucky to found out there.

Souda also was the one who Komaeda suddenly encountered on the front porch.

"Good morning," Nagito wished.

"Uh, yeah, same to you," the mechanic shortly responded.

They would normally part their ways there, not giving it much thought, but Souda hesitated, and Komaeda, who accidentally tarried long enough to notice that, stopped too giving him a long look.

"Actually I've just finished with one of washing machines," he spoke, scratching his head with a bit of irritation. "It brokes for the second time this month already."

"It can't be helped, I guess, it's probably older than all of us," Komaeda reminded indifferently.

"I know that it's held together with gods' help only and gonna die soon anyway, but it's better not to be helped with it," Souda exclaimed almost resentfully, but cut himself as if he had just realized that Komaeda in particular probably had nothing to do with it. "Nothing personal, and I don't want to investigate who keeps doing that, but just in case – check your pockets before shoving anything into it, 'kay?"

Komaeda, who didn't want to think too much whether Souda's rant was appliable to him or not, nodded in silence.

After that they finally went their ways and Nagito got back to his business. He lifted down the pile of dirty clothes right on the washing machine and started to sorting it through one more time, so he could also check pockets as Kazuichi asked. His hands were going through shirts, pants, underwear on their own while he was deep in his thoughts: like how he had to change the bed and clean off the windows tomorrow.

He wanted to remind Tsumiki about the thing he asked her before. Komaeda knew that there was at least one wheel chair at the hospital, which didn't obviously served anything else anyway. It was a bad idea for Hajime – and probably not even possible in his current state anymore – to leave the cottage by his own feet, but Nagito could imagine how he felt about not seeing anything but walls around him for weeks. To look at it realistically, it wasn't going to help him in any way, but Komaeda just wanted it himself: he wanted to let him feel the sun's warmth, to see the ocean again. Tsumiki promised that she would think about it and decide depending on the situation. And now Hajime was obviously even worse, but... if he wasn't going to get better anymore at all, then every day could be the last chance for them to do it.

Komaeda was holding his own coat and digged hand into the pocket, expecting to take it out back really soon, but something rough touched his fingers. Komaeda got slightly surprised – he didn't remember what he could put there and when – and pulled it out without a second thought.

Small enough to hold between two of his fingers – the dark-grey stone was twinkling with a light metallic glisten. Komaeda saw something like this only once: when he found it in grass, being surrounded by the similar ones and the bigger rock, which looked like...

The chill ran down Nagito's back when he recalled the every chip on its surface with a frightening detail despite of how he didn't even paid his attention to it back then. A bunch of stones being scattered around the cobble, which probably was just a fragment itself, too. A fragment of what? Komaeda wished to never know it. But he already did.

The part of him wanted to throw this thing far away, though it was already too late, but instead of it he just shoved it deep into his back pocket. It wasn't now important where it was going to lay. It wasn't now even important how many of stones similar to it could lay without them knowing all over the island in shades of trees.

Komaeda finished with the laundry and got back home.

The room in front of him looked so weird and wrong once Nagito just hadn't find Hajime in his bed. He looked over it slowly and carefully from the wall to the ceiling, like he could somehow just not notice Hinata who moved to another corner or was covered by the blanket. When he made sure that it hadn't helped, Komaeda had one more place left to check before he could start to panic.

There actually was the blurry silhouette behind the bathroom's door. Komaeda knocked subtly.

"Hajime, are you alright?"

He didn't intend to jump to conclusion and break into, because first of all there wasn't anything weird in leaving to a bathroom. Hajime could have quite natural reasons to be there. But instead of getting some kind of response, which would prove that theory, Komaeda heard strange noise: as if something fell into the sink with a loud clunking. Now Nagito had the full right to be alarmed.

"I'm coming," he warned and pushed the door.

Hajime was standing next to the sink not so steadily; Komaeda catched just a snatch of the move with which he shut the door of the bathroom locker above.

"Are you okay?" Nagito asked once again. "Do you need something?"

"No, I..." Hajime blurted out haltingly. "No, it's better now."

"You felt not well? Should I bring Tsumiki-san?"

"I'm fine," Hajime cut him. Komaeda ignored how unnecessarily bluntly he did that, but noted to himself how weird and nervous Hajime was acting.

"Then you better to get back to bed," Komaeda reminded him and lend him his hand so he could lean on it. Hajime just clenched to his t-shirt ligtly and they went out together.

Komaeda didn't planned to keep asking Hajime about what had made him like this. Considering that nothing special had actually happened within past few hours, Komaeda's head still was too full of thoughts and worrisome discoveries, and he had to get through them with extreme cautious risking to let something totally unpredictable even for himself escape his mind.

And he failed – he realized that when he opened his mouth and exhaled.

"Do you want to go to the beach?"

Hajime, who had barely caught his breath lying on the bed, looked at Komaeda in frustration.

"Erm, not really," he muttered.

"No, I mean," Komaeda categorically shook of _such_ refuse: since he knew perfectly how behind Hinata's stubborness and pride obviously the sullen thought that he couldn't make it out of the cottage by his own feet was hiding. "I mean, if you wouldn't have to walk..."

Hajime stayed silent for a while, not looking too eager, but it actually meant that he was thinking out Komaeda's offer for serious.

"Then I wouldn't mind, I guess," he finally answered, not like unsure, just without any visible interest. But Komaeda didn't need more.

He really had to ask Tsumiki before rushing things on his own because he was just feeling like this; Komaeda realized what he had done when he already passed the doorway with enormous speed. And after that his body just kept moving ahead and faster than everything else in him. He had at least to come to the nurse on his way and warn, to confront her about it so she would be ready to deal with consequences of his desperate, hot-headed decisions.

Komaeda headed straight to the hospital.


	10. Chapter 10

A shover rain visited the island the day before, but there was not a sign of it left by now. White sand dried up in the hot sun, and the wind was sluggishly carrying smal wimps of pale, thin clouds across the light-blue sky. It was a nice day.

Carefully pushing the wheelchair forward, Komaeda walked along the coast and regretted nothing. He suddenly found out that he hadn't been outside just to enjoy it for so long already too. He lifted down his eyelids a little bit to gaze at the ocean with the midday sparkling in it, like he hadn't ever seen it before and it was probably going to never be enough for him. Though he couldn't help glancing at Hajime from time to time.

He had been silent since they arrived there. But even without looking at his face, Komaeda could sense something more than just this silence; he could hear the echo of emotions being sealed in him by the illness and exhaustion, which reached him through Hajime's closed lips. That brang his heart peace and content Nagito had been longing so hard all this while. _He had nothing to regret at all._

Komaeda stopped and carefully turned the wheel chair to the effervescent waves gliding on the smooth shore.

"I had no idea that I was actually missing it that much," Hajime said after a while. His voice had cut through and got a little stronger. Maybe sea air was actually pretty much of help and good for him, or Hajime just had not so many reasons to talk louder before.

When Komaeda got his grip on reality back, he went around the wheelchair and squatted down in front of Hajime. Before the guy could start asking him, Nagito lifted Hinata's foot with his both hands and pulled off his sneaker, then rolled up the trouser leg a little. He handled his other foot the same way.

Komaeda turned up his head. Hajime was looking at him mildly wonderingly first, but quickly, as Komaeda expected, got the meaning of his sudden gesture. He put his bare feel down on the ground, sinking them into sand with slow raking moves. He drew a couple of circles with his tiptoes on it, and Nagito heared something which sounded like a quiet, satisfied sigh.

Komaeda stood up.

"Do you want to get closer to the water?"

"The wheels can get stuck in the sodden sand," Hinata remarked.

"I'll carry you."

"No damn way," Hajime retorted and lifted himself up over the wheelchair, trying to lean on it with his elbows, but a painful expression broke through his face right away, and he fell back with a muffled groan.

Komaeda placed the hand on his shoulder without a thought. Worried and concerned, he waited for Hajime to start breathing at the normal pace again.

"...Just help me a bit," he pushed out gloomy.

Hinata got up using Komaeda's shoulder as a support. They started walking towards the water: the feet with a slow and smooth tread and the feet heavily hobbling in sand. Nagito suddenly remembered that he hadn't taken off his own shoes, but that thought just tapped him and dissapeared far away with a light gust of ocean breeze passing by.

The wave's tail stuck the fabric to his leg with a hit, and they stopped by there, in shallow tide surrounding them. Komaeda tilted his head a bit and felt how their hair touched. He glanced down just to take a look at how the water was softly flowing over Hajime's feet. With Nagito's help, but he was standing straight and steady, inhaling the salty air deep into his lungs.

He was so beautiful. The ocean was so beautiful, and the endless, eternal sky above them – too. This whole utterly broken world was just so beautiful, and Komaeda could both laugh and cry about it, but he closed his eyes instead and then opened them again so he could not to waste this chance to take away and keep the sun in his memory until its very last moment.

He didn't care about thinking in advance and now it was almost frightening him to death that he didn't knew when it was time to draw the line under all of it. But just a little more time passed before Hajime himself quietly asked him to head back.

Komaeda crouched down near the wheelchair again to pick up his sneakers. Hajime's feet were covered by wet sand. There wasn't much sense in trying to shake it all off before they dried up, and putting shoes back like that wasn't a good idea either. Not that it mattered for Hajime sitting in his wheelchair though.

That was how the flow of thoughts which Komaeda fell into looked like. He hesitated, staring at his feet. But he probably just considered the moment not awkward enough yet, so Nagito pulled one of them a little closer and touched the clean skin – sun was glistening on it in the water drops – with his lips.

"N-Nagito!" Hajime gasped surprisingly loud. His foot twitched a bit, but it remained in Komaeda's hand just how it was, when he rose the head and saw his flushed face.

Komaeda smiled smugly and the next place, where his mouth went, was Hajime's lips. He pressured into them in the tender and long kiss, which Hinata abruptly broke, but not too soon in fact.

"Salt," he winced, but the smile on his face was too wide to represent disgust. More like he was amused by that discovery.

"That's how the ocean tastes," Komaeda noted.

Hajime softened all at once: now he was looking at him the way which probably was going to make it Komaeda's turn to blush. The corners of his lips got back, and now it was hardly a smile, but eyebrows rose; Hajime stretched out his arm and touched Nagito's lower lip with his fingertip. Komaeda naturally opened them a little, being caught by this softening feeling.

"I love you," Hinata whispered with the voice went husky again. Komaeda grabbed his whole hand and pressed it to his face. His hard knuckles bulged out underneath the skin, and Nagito barely held his longing to cover them with kisses, one by one.

"I love you too," he exhaled, panting from this painful and yet so beautiful weightlessness in his chest.

The tide washed off their footprints before they left.

  


They made it to the cottage early and somehow avoided all of possible encounters and awkward questions on their way back. Now Hajime was there to got back to bed and Komaeda – to resume his daily attempts to assure himself that life went on.

He picked the book up off the window sill and opened it nearly its third where he left the opalescent cardboard boomark with star-shaped colorful sequins being stapled all over it – Mioda made it for his birthday. With it he sat down right on the floor, leaning back the bed.

The blanket started rustling behind him.

"There's enough room for you," Hajime muttered.

"No-no, I won't disturb you, just rest," Komaeda's object was calm, but firm.

Hinata hemmed, but responded nothing.

Komaeda almost reached the border of the current page when his voice sounded again.

"Could you read it outloud?"

Being caught off guard, Nagito said dubious, "It's been a long since the beginning, you wouldn't catch up with the plot. It's a crime story, in addition."

Komaeda was perfectly aware of what Hinata felt towards this genre now. But to his surprise, Hajime totally ignored his point.

"Whatever. Just read. Please," he added a bit smoother.

Komaeda hesitated. Why this kind of situations somehow was always much more complicated than figuring out the culprit in the first fifty pages of another mystery novel? In the end, saying no more words, he just got back to the first chapter. And began to read.

Nagito took a break only when he could barely make it through the ache in his sore throat. He got up from the floor to get a glass of water. Also took a moment to give a glance to the clock: it was a little past four.

"Are you thirsty?" he asked Hajime.

A pause. Komaeda was already used to it and just waited.

"No... actually, I want to sleep early."

For the past week and a half roughly he managed to fall asleep only thanks to medications – so that wasn't even an innuendo. Komaeda exhaled a quiet "oh".

"I can go get Tsumiki-san, but she may be not home yet or busy..."

"It's not a must for her to be there."

"Yes, but... Fine, just wait, I'll bring it myself."

"Nagito, wait-!"

Komaeda did a couple of steps toward bathroom, but almost tumbled rearward when Hajime jerked abruptly under the blanket, nearly sitting up. Totally blank, Nagito said slowly.

"It's okay, it's easy enough... and you aren't bothering me."

He resumed his way to the bathroom, giving Hajime concerned looks. The other guy went silent, but kept watching all of his movements... a bit too intently. As if he desperately wanted to say something else as much as he was restraining himself from it. Komaeda was used to his stubborness and slightly excessive selflessness, but that moment the worrysome sense, that it was a bit too much even for Hajime, began flaring up inside of him.

But he was already standing in front of the bathroom cabinet. And no matter how hard Komaeda tried, he couldn't see any problem with it.

He put the glass, already being filled with water, on the sink and opened the door. There was quite more bottles inside than it was normal to see in an average home first-aid kit... not that it had always been this way. And a rare average person could immediately sort out in what could be found there, even though all of it was labelled, but Komaeda didn't need a single hint. Without thinking he reached the shelf and took the small phial: a few pills were plinking on the bottom of it; and he could've shut the cabinet back right away.

If something else hadn't hit the sink with a clanking.

Another vial rolled over the polished ceramics and stuck in the drainer, too big to go through it. Grey, opaque bottle with a single label – halfly went off for unknown reason – which could only fit the name being printed in a small font. Komaeda pulled it from the sink and brought it closer.

He would've never known what that long, sophisticated word meant, if just... if that particular fact, which was the reason for everything which happened to go wrong in his life, hadn't existed: the fact that he was Komaeda. Those were just some of the days he spent in the hospital during the medical check-up. He suddenly felt that he couldn't last any longer in that empty ward, which looked like it was cut out of white paperboard, and went out to take a walk through the hospital's halls. He skillfully – though he didn't even intend it – avoided staff and other patients while moving forward with no goal or destination, just going anywhere he could pass, and that was how he accidently ended up in the small room where neatly organized cabinets were filled by stuff which one couldn't just buy in a regular pharmacy so easy: potent tranquilizers, anesthetics which probably was capable of sending you to another universe, other rare and expensive medications. But what catched his eye most was the showcase with its own lock. The room itself wasn't locked by a lucky – how surprising – chance, but the most intriguing, curious ambience surely were coming from those shelves. But Komaeda could still read the labels through the glass at least.

Later he discovered that all of them were associated with euthanasia.

The drug he was holding in his hand now Nagito memorized particularly well. Back then, seeing all of those lines in his medical record, Komaeda already gave up. He wasn't as interested in medications he used to take and in therapy his doctor kept insisting on, as he was interested in probably only "cure" he had left to truly save him from all of that. Maybe, not yet. But a peaceful death waiting him just in one pill which he simply had to dissolve and drink from the glass – just too good to be real, and that was why he wanted it to be real.

Komaeda shook the bottle, but it seemed empty.

There was no way to check his horrific guess. The only thing he could do was to put together, like a puzzle, every single piece of his memories. Every single anguish groan, which escaped Hajime's lungs, his swollen eyes and grey morbid shadows under them.

_I won't let you do this,_ Komaeda thought. He wanted so much to put another meaning into them.

The reality was that he couldn't.

Komaeda took the sedative vial from the shelf and threw the two pills which were left in it. Giving off a quiet fizz, they dissapeared with last tiny bubbles bursted in the slightly whitened water.

_I won't let you do this alone._

Hajime got back to staring tensively at him when Komaeda showed up in the room.

"It's okay," he clenched his lips, smiling. "It's... easy enough," Nagito echoed, clutching the glass with his cold hand.

Hajime mumbled something he couldn't hear out, seemed to be in a tough struggle with himself, but he didn't have enough strength and words to fight even against Komaeda's slow, unsteady steps, making it to the bed.

He was capable of keeping this mask, pretending that he had no idea what was actually happening. But the pure horror was taking over Hajime's face now not even being held at all, and it probably wasn't letting him to say a word, otherwise he would've confessed a long time ago. Komaeda sat down on the bed and looked at him silently with a shade of that faint, flimsy smile. Now he somehow couldn't get rid off it.

He was looking at each other as if it was a competition. Komaeda could only guess what Hajime was feeling, but was somewhat confident about his own chances of winning: everything which had been making him a human suddenly dissapeared in him, Komaeda Nagito had dissapeared himself, he was just this glass he was holding and no more than that. If Hinata wanted to leave it all not that complicated, he could still do it. If he cherished the truth more – he would find it in him.

Hajime frowned and asked, with his fear being faded away by guilt, which was in fact the core of everything.

"Are you sure?"

"If it's what you want," Nagito answered staunchly.

After all those years, Komaeda still believed into hope. He loved it, he found it beautiful and he knew as well as anybody where it could lead. And that sometimes you can find it somewhere you had never actually tried to search.

At some moment the words "hope" and "Hajime" started meaning the same for him. Stronger than in hope he believed only in Hajime. And if Hajime's hope wasn't the miracle which probably wasn't even to going to happen after all of those pain and fear... he was ready to follow him in it.

To not let the death to take him away with its cold, unloving hands, Komaeda could become his death himself.

Hinata sat up and took the glass from him. He brang it to his lips slow, almost unsure, but drained it quick with just a couple of gulps, too close to choking. Komaeda watched him yearningly, listening to metal screech of the chaotic thoughts in his head tangling into the barbed orb which was growing bigger endlessly and scratching his skull from the inside. It wasn't even hope now at all, but once again he put everything he had left into this deranged idea: that if they still had a smallest chance to get through it somehow, their merged luck would save him, and if not – it would kill him. But tenderly, with a soft warmth, like the sweetest dream.

Hajime placed his head back on the pillow, staring blank to somewhere for a few moments. When their sights met once again, Komaeda was so empty and just had nothing to say with simple human words that he coudln't believe it.

He felt something familiar in that sense in Hajime's desperate whisper – and yet he turned out to be much more successful than him.

"You are the best," he blurted out. "Don't dare to ever forget it."

"Probably the best after you," Nagito breathed out heavily and bent down to his face. He sucked to his lips' bitterness like it could've been a doze enough to finish him off too, and it would be a luck for him in fact; and to feel that Hajime longed for him that fervidly either was probably more than he could ever handle, both happiness and pain were tearing Nagito apart. Komaeda slid the arm under his back, and Hajime were now lying not in the bed, but rather in his embrace.

When he finally broke the kiss, he saw the shade of anxiety in his eyes, vague but twinkling like a star in the pitch-black darkness.

"I'm scared," Hajime confessed.

"Yes, that's how it usually feels," Komaeda forced out a weak, sick laugh. For a moment he feared that his throat shuddered, but his eyes stayed dry, as if he had nothing left to cry out in the first place. He fitted his head between Hajime's neck and shoulder, wrapping the other arm around him too. 

"Please stay," Hinata whispered, though he hadn't to ask about that. "I want to hear you voice."

Komaeda knew that he would definitely say something stupid, weird or out of place again if he would keep opening his mouth, and he would really prefer to listen to his breathing in silence instead of that – to imprint it to his memory, to fill his whole ears with it and never hear the world bereft of such beautiful sound, – but he couldn't refuse, couldn't even hesitate or think it out. He sighed deeply, trying to find and catch anything in his blank head, but in the end the only thing he came up with – stupid songs everyone used to learn in their childhood, simple lullabies with just a couple lines of lyrics, which one just can't forget so easily even in the rapid tide of time. He had no time to worry about how ridiculous it was. Nagito pulled them out from the deepest corner of his memory, quietly singing just a half, and rather spelling out the rest when he suddenly couldn't catch the right rhythm for some reason.

Fingers softly ran through his curly hair and went down to his back to grab onto to his t-shirt, though Komaeda could hardly feel it. He went ahead with singing as if he wasn't able to ever stop anymore, pressing his cheek tightly to Hajime's neck. And that moment he found the confidence that strong that he had never had before, that all of that was the only and enough reason for him to be ever born: to be there and now, with him, until the very end. He probably believed for real for the first time that him being born _wasn't_ a mistake. There wasn't even a need to say "I love you" outloud anymore.

  


A faint hibiscus' scent was coming to the room through the window.


	11. Epilogue

Jaberwock had days when the sun-drenched island with clear blue skies lying above it was really like a paradise, the most serene and wonderful place where one could begin the day and live through it for only and enough reason – because life was just beautiful. It had unbearably hot days when humidity could drain and dry you out to the soul and make fancy tropical-themed herbarium out of what had been left; deadly pale sun kept on digging into hurted, watery eyes, and every shade, in which the salvation usually could have been found, treacherously wrapping anyone, who searched for it, with a thin stifling coverlet. Today was the second.

Komaeda couldn't help feeling that every day, except for rainy ones, was like that lately.

And yet he was sitting on the boulder, right under the blazing midday sun, which was barely soften by the ocean breeze. Heavy beads of sweat were running down from Nagito's forehead, and they bugged him more than this unremitting heat itself. Firstly, the hotel didn't look like a good place to hide unless Souda would fix the air conditioner there, anyway. Secondly, Komaeda wasn't even sure that the fever he was feeling was coming only from the outside. He pulled on the hood so he wouldn't get a sunstroke at least.

Though he didn't actually care about that anymore.

Nagito was looking at the hollow horizon, sparkling in the sunshine, but it was vapid like slashing light of huge searchlights which could burn eyes of one who got in their way. Unmerciful sultriness was in the air. This mere day felt somewhat sick. Or it was just Komaeda.

He kept rolling over the tiny velvety stone between his fingers. Not intentionally, he was nearly irritated by that himself, but couldn't help it.

It had been a month already, maybe. Komaeda just hadn't any good reasons to keep track of time and count it more carefully now. There was still quite peacefully out there, except for how they occasionally witnessed shooting stars at the night sky, but no one had ever felt like making a wish. Even though they now had such a good view spot in the library – with the hole in its roof.

It would be too naive to expect their island utopia dream will to last forever at that point. They weren't exceptional. There was nothing exceptional about the whole 77-th class but the fact that they somehow managed to be happy much longer than they were supposed to.

Back to that day a month ago, when Tsumiki came later at the evening, Komaeda layed besides Hajime, holding him in his arms, and he was still singing quietly. She told him that later, because Komaeda couldn't recall a single thing about the end of that day on his own. As if he had never lived it, or it just had been torn out from time and erased.

It could've been better for him... probably. But in fact Nagito would prefer to feel _anything_ but that blank and uncertain itch in his heart that he lost something important though he didn't even remember what. He actually _did_ remember. But he still couldn't really experience it.

He handed over Hajime's records regarding his research to the foundation, because he had to. He wasn't considering for real that it could change anything though. To be honest, he just didn't want to consider it: since it would be the cruelest miracle ever happened in his life. The only thing which was capable of making Komaeda accept Hajime's death – with just a half of his heart and on the very edge of his sanity – was inevitability. The immutable fact that he just lost to the force nobody else could defeat as well so. For Nagito the whole world wasn't worthy enough to let it belittle the existance of the person most dear to him.

Komaeda coughed. He hadn't pulled out a hanky in time, and a couple of dark stains colored the sand next to the boulder into red.

All he really had regrets about was how much of the efforts Hajime spent to save this body were now wasted.

Komaeda didn't even think about disturbing anything of his stuff in the cottage, but a few days after Hinata passed Komaeda remembered about the bag with Koizumi's photographic equipment. God knew how long it had been lying there and waiting for the right moment to remind about itself. The right moment never happened in the end. And it was never going to happen now, Komaeda thought, heading to Mahiru's cottage with the bag and the request – only things he had left.

If he had had any choice, Nagito would've preferred _those photos_ to stay unseen by anyone but him and Hajime, but the case was he didn't have it, and Koizumi... she was just the only person there now who Komaeda could entrust them and who was competent enough to handle them the way they deserved. When he came next day, the girl handed him over the large paper envelope. Komaeda went too impatient and opened it in front of her.

Holding them with his hands felt somehow different. Komaeda naively believed that what he already felt looking at them once just couldn't be any... purer, deeper. He was wrong.

"I knew that after all of that Hinata shares this talent along with the others, but..." Koizumi said, lowering her voice for some reason. "I had no idea that he was so..."

_Good at that,_ was what she mumbled to herself, but thought too low about Komaeda who heared her out just perfectly despite of that.

"Yes, he was," Komaeda breathed out, still not able to take his eyes away from the photo he was looking at.

They both were smiling there.

"Komaeda-kun?" Koizumi suddenly called for him subtly, somewhat genuinely. Komaeda looked up at her and found out that she was kind of blurry in his sight.

"It's fine," he blurted out with a bit shaky voice, wiping his face. "Thank you so much."

He put the photos back into the envelope and left her cottage almost in hurry.

A bit later he realized a thing: she had never called him "Komaeda-kun" before.

Squinting, Komaeda kept looking into the skyline, and he wasn't actually waiting for something or somebody to show up out of there this time, but at the same time he was waiting for that harder than ever. He stretched the hand which had been fiddling with the chip nervously so far. Few sparks run over its surface before Nagito clenched it his fist and threw it forward. He didn't hear the sound with which it ploped into the water, but played it in his head.

How many years would pass before the flow would smooth it out; how many decennaries – before it would get to the size of a grape seed; how many centuries – if this long-suffering world would be still standing – before nothing would be left of it and that would be at least a bit of vengeance for Hajime's stolen life?

Probably the biggest luck Komaeda ever had was to never find it out. Like Hinata in the end turned out to be lucky to leave first – before he could've seen this happening to all of them.

He once told that maybe it wasn't about luck this time at all. And yet, he was lucky: he had captured the true sun he had seen with his own eyes, and now it was left there, on the soft paper Nagito could touch with his hands.

Komaeda started coughing again. The sudden faintness pulled his head down. He layed on his back and closed eyes. 

Somewhere far away seagulls cried out and got dead silent right away. The sound of waves was getting deeper and deeper into his ears. He didn't mind falling asleep there just like that, probably even for a while.

_If only he could just wake up once again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone who made it until there, because... I know what it could cost for you, guys. As I mentioned in the beginning notes, I wrote this fic only to make myself and whoever read this feel pain, though for me it will forever stay just AU and sort of "What-If" scenario, which the friend of mine suggested me, and I just... took it too serious. So if you're not fine by that point, trust me, me too.
> 
> Also, English is not my first language, it's literally the translation of my own fic and my first experience with it, so if you spotted any big mistakes or really weird lines and feel like pointing it out, it will help a lot!
> 
> Just in case, I'm @gaysdr2noises on Twitter, you always can send me your curses and tears.


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